Bring the natural beauty of Mother Nature indoors this holiday season with a few easy decorating ideas anyone can master.

      Bright red dogwood branches can be cut and placed in a clear glass vase for a starkly beautiful decoration.  Or cut some interesting branches from any old tree or shrub and spray paint them red, gold or silver for a similar adornment.  Red or gold beads in the bottom of the vase for “soil” add even more beauty.

      Place evergreen sprigs or an evergreen branch in a tall glass vase with straight sides.  If you like, intersperse small red or gold ornaments with the evergreens.  Tie or glue a colorful half-inch ribbon around the top of the vase and fill it with water. 

      The same thing can be done with a large wine glass with a pretty ribbon tied around its stem.  A grouping of three would make a lovely centerpiece.  Change the water every few days and your decoration will last for several weeks. 

      A simple wicker basket filled with pine cones makes a nice display.  To jazz it up, spray the cones with gold spray paint or spray snow.  The cones can also be painted with white glue and rolled in cinnamon, nutmeg or other spices to scent the room.

      Cut some dried ornamental grasses, native plants such as echinacea, black-eyed Susan, bee balm or liatris, or weeds with interesting seed pods like velvet leaf.  Tie them with a red ribbon and display them in a simple vase.  The grasses will look wonderful left natural; the other plants will add a bit of glitz to your décor when spray-painted gold.

      Greenery cut from your Christmas tree or the evergreens in your yard can add simple elegance to any room when placed among knick knacks on a shelf, tucked into the tie back of a curtain, or slipped into a napkin ring beside a place setting.

      Do you still have that Indian corn from your fall decorations?  Shuck the corn from the cobs and use it to fill a pint canning jar.  Stick a red taper candle in the corn and tie a red ribbon around the neck of the jar.  A small pine cone or other simple ornament tied or glued to the ribbon finishes it off.

      The December 2006 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine has a wonderful idea for making a small table top forest.  Place pine cones upside down in small silver cups, bowls or candlesticks.  Cut a cardboard star and cover it with glitter to stick in the top of each cone.  The entire small forest could be set on a decorative tray and interspersed with candles, greenery and small round ornaments.

      Take a walk around your yard and look for dried flower heads, weeds, rose hips, twigs and branches, bird nests, stones and rocks, even a few branches you can nip from the back of your evergreen trees or shrubs.  A little imagination and Mother Nature make for simple holiday beauty.

      Is there a gardener on your Christmas gift list?  Here are some suggestions sure to be appreciated by the gardener in your life.

      Most gardeners love gardening books.  Not only are they good reference materials during the season, they give us something to dream about over the winter.  A beginning gardener will appreciate a basic gardening methods book while more advanced gardeners might like a book specific to their area of interest.  There are books solely about roses, or hostas or cactuses or lilies.  Some books pertain to certain growing conditions, such as shade gardening or container gardening.  Others deal with specific themes, such as gardens for butterflies, for scent, for nighttime interest, for cutting, for herbs, or for all white-flowering plants.  Then there are the reference and identification books about trees, shrubs, grasses, perennials, annuals, weeds, native plants or herbs.  There are a number of books on the market published specifically for gardening in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest.  A subscription to a gardening magazine would also be much appreciated.

      Gardeners also love tools.  Like any pursuit, the proper tools make gardening much more enjoyable.  Perhaps your gardener would like a sturdier trowel or a better hoe.  Maybe a stronger spading fork or a sharp new pruning saw.  How about a wheel barrow or garden cart?  Watering cans and gloves, gloves, gloves – we really go through them! – are always great gifts. 

      If your gardener has withdrawal symptoms over the cold months, he or she will surely perk up after receiving a boxed set of daffodil, amaryllis or paper white bulbs for forcing indoors.  This time of year you can find these at garden centers, home improvement stores, department stores and some grocery stores.

      For gardeners who like indoor gardening, a new or unusual houseplant may be just the thing.  People who enjoy container gardening, indoors or out, will be very excited by any new pot or growing container.

      If practicality is your aim, then a bag of compost, vermiculite, peat moss, perlite or organic fertilizer is the best bet.  Hoses, plant supports and twine are also always needed.  If whimsy is the goal, there are hundreds of metal or glass items meant to decorate the garden from which to choose.  They range in price from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars and in style from kitschy to tasteful and elegant.

      To pamper the gardener, there are many specialty soaps and lotions marketed specifically for gardeners that are meant to clean and soothe hard-working hands.

      If you’re just not sure what to buy for the gardener on your list, a gift card to one of the local garden centers or to a mail order company is always a winner.

      Gardening for wildlife is much more fun and relaxing than gardening purely for beauty or to keep up with your neighbors’ expectations for yards in the neighborhood.

      A landscape with perfectly trimmed trees and shrubs and annuals lined up in rows like soldiers may be pretty, but it is rather sterile.  Add some birdsong and butterflies and the yard instantly comes to life.

      To welcome wildlife, four items are needed:  food, water, protective cover and places to raise young.

      Putting up a bird feeder is one option for providing food, but not the easiest.  You have to remember to fill it, clean it occasionally and try to keep the squirrels from stealing the bird seed.  A better way to provide food is to plant native plants that will provide nuts, seeds and berries for wildlife all year long.  Once native plants are established, they need little or no maintenance.  The National Wildlife Federation lists these plants as the top ten native plants for Wisconsin:  northern white cedar, black oak, American highbush cranberry, northern hackberry, gray dogwood, chokecherry, swamp milkweed, wild columbine and cup plant.  There are hundreds more beautiful and interesting plants native to our area.  A good place to find out about them is at www.for-wild.org or the library.

      Butterflies like red, orange, pink or purple blossoms.  The flowers should be flat-topped or clustered or have short flower tubes.  Some of the best butterfly attractors are zinnias, marigolds, tithonia, buddleia, milkweeds, verbenas, and many mint family plants.  Make sure they are located in a sunny area.

      Water can be provided with a birdbath, a small pond or just a shallow dish set out on your patio.  Be sure to place the water source within sight of your window so you can watch the birds frolic! 

      Protective cover means a place for wildlife to hide and feel safe.  You can plant a small meadow or prairie, or if that is too ambitious, plant densely-branched shrubs and evergreens.  Hollow logs, brush piles and rock piles also provide cover.  You can make or buy nesting boxes too.  A little research will tell you the proper kind of nesting box for the birds you want to attract.

      Most important, once you attract the wildlife to your yard, don’t kill them by using any kind of insecticide.  Insecticides aren’t choosy – they will kill any kind of insect, including butterflies and caterpillars.  They can even poison the birds who eat the insects.

      When your yard provides food, water, cover and a place to raise young, you can certify it with the National Wildlife Federation at www.nwf.org/backyard.

Mulch offers many benefits to plants during the growing season and it is equally important to mulch plants over the winter. 

      You may think that the purpose of winter mulch is to keep your plants warm but it is actually just the opposite.  Mulch should be applied after the ground freezes, usually around Thanksgiving.  Its purpose is to keep the ground frozen rather than allowing it to freeze, then thaw on a warm day, then freeze again.  The freeze/thaw cycle can damage the roots of a plant or even heave it out of the ground.  This exposes their roots which will be killed by the cold.  It is especially important to mulch young trees and shrubs and newly planted perennials over their first winter since they are not firmly established in the ground.

      The recent warm winters make mulching even more important as we cannot count on consistent cold temperatures to keep the ground frozen.  In the past, a blanket of snow provided the best mulch, but the snow cover is no longer constant throughout the winter so we have to provide the mulch ourselves.

      Any plants that are overwintered outdoors in containers should be mulched thickly.  Not only is the top of the container exposed to the sun, but the sides, especially if they are dark in color can really warm up on a sunny winter day.

      A 2- to 6-inch layer of organic mulch placed around perennial flowers, trees and shrubs is best.  For trees, it should be spread all the way to the drip line, the circle covered by the outermost branches, as small feeder roots may extend this far.  Do not lay mulch right up to the stems or trunks of the plants.  This just encourages mice and moles to snuggle up under the mulch and make a winter snack of the plants.

      Winter mulch should be of a material that doesn’t pack down with the weight of snow or heavy rain.  Hay, straw and pine needles are good.  Evergreen branches cut from your Christmas tree make a great mulch   Leaves will pack down unless something waterproof is placed on top of them.  If you use wood chips or bark as a landscape mulch, replenish them now and make them do double duty as a winter mulch.  Not only will you get the benefits of winter mulch, you’ll be that much further ahead in your spring chores! 

      A final benefit of winter mulch is that it prevents the soil from warming too rapidly in the spring.  When the soil warms too quickly, shrubs and trees are fooled into leafing out and blossoming too early, thereby exposing themselves to frost damage.

The last two summers have been much drier than usual.  Other parts of the country have been dealing with lack of rain for years, but in the Midwest, with a few exceptions, we’ve had ample rain for the past several decades.

      Xeriscaping is the term coined to describe a method of water conservation through creative landscaping.  It comes from the Greek “xeros” meaning “dry,” and of course, landscaping.  It does not mean a landscape of gravel and cactuses.  Beauty is not sacrificed when a xeriscape landscape is in place.  It does mean reducing water waste, improving the soil, using mulch to keep soil cool and moist, and choosing plants that don’t need pampering in the form of excess watering.        

      The xeriscape concept encourages grouping of plants with similar water needs together in beds so that they can be watered as needed with little water wasted.  The use of beds also allows for installation of a drip irrigation system or use of a soaker hose.  Both these methods result in water applied directly to the soil, reducing water consumption by up to 60% over sprinkler irrigation.

      Mulching around plants plays an important role in the xeriscape garden.  Mulch can reduce water demand by as much as 40% by keeping the soil cooler, eliminating weed competition and reducing evaporation from the soil surface.

      Plants that tolerate dry conditions should be chosen.  However, a plant labeled “drought tolerant” cannot just be stuck in the ground and left to its own devices.  Such plants are drought tolerant only after they have become established.  An annual flower may become established in a couple weeks, while a perennial takes a month or more depending on the soil conditions.  Shrubs need extra water for the first season and trees should be well-watered for their first two years.

      Even if you can’t embrace the xeriscape concept for your entire landscape, moving things around a bit or just making smart choices for new plantings can help conserve water.

      Many of the plants you already have in your yard are appropriate for a xeriscape garden.  Some common annuals that can do with little water include cosmos, moss rose, gomphrena or globe amaranth, salvia, nasturtium, dusty miller, alyssum, marigolds, calendula, cleome or spider plant, flowering tobacco and zinnia.  Perennials include yarrow, asters, butterfly weed, harebells, gallardia, daylilies, irises, liatris, flax, evening primrose, Russian sage, Virginia creeper, penstemon, sage, columbine, wild indigo, coreopsis and purple coneflower.  The list of drought tolerant trees and shrubs includes Amur maple, serviceberry, spirea, catalpa, hackberry, cotoneaster, green ash, Kentucky coffee tree, potentilla, chokecherry, burr oak, staghorn sumac and lilacs.  In addition, most native prairie plants are drought tolerant and adapted to our area.

            The list above is long, but nowhere near complete.  A little research on the internet or at the library over the winter will have you well-prepared if 2007 is as dry as 2006

      Common buckthorn and glossy buckthorn were introduced to the United States in the 1800s as tough, hardy shrubs for the landscape.  That toughness has made buckthorn aggressively invasive to the point where it is crowding out native flowers in woodland areas, forming an impenetrable understory layer, destroying wildlife habitat and causing long-term decline of forests by preventing the growth of native tree seedlings.

      Buckthorn also spreads easily into savannas, prairies, abandoned fields and roadsides, forming dense thickets.  In your yard, you many find buckthorn spouting up within the branches of other multi-stemmed shrubs or in a neglected corner.

      Buckthorn is easiest to identify in late fall; it is the only tree or shrub still holding onto its green leaves.  Common buckthorn leaves are rounded to egg-shaped with finely toothed margins.  The leaves are very dark, dull to glossy green.  Glossy buckthorn has dark green, glossy, oval-shaped leaves.  A good way to make a positive identification of either species is to scratch the surface of a trunk or stem.  If you find orange inner bark it is buckthorn.

      Both species grow 10 to 25 feet tall and may be either trees or shrubs.  There are separate male and female plants with only the female producing berries.  In fall the berries turn black and are much loved by birds throughout the winter.  Each berry contains 2-4 seeds that are poisonous to humans.  The berries have a laxative effect on birds which ensures the spread of the seeds throughout the habitat.  Thousands of buckthorn seedlings can sprout within the area of one mature tree.

      Buckthorn is best controlled by pulling the seedlings when they are less than a half inch in diameter.  It is easiest to do when the ground is moist after a good rain. 

      Larger trees and shrubs must be cut and immediately brushed or sprayed with an herbicide containing triclopyr such as Garlon 4 or Ortho Brush-B-Gone.  Cutting the trees or shrubs without the herbicide follow-up is worse than not cutting them at all since they will re-sprout heavily with more branches than before.

      Smaller trees, with less than a 6-inch diameter may be treated using the basal bark method.  They need not be cut before herbicide is applied.  Apply the herbicide at the base of the plant, wetting the bark from the soil-line up to about 12-15 inches.  Spray so that the trunk becomes thoroughly wet, but not to the point of runoff.  Each stem of the plant must be treated.

      The best time of year to treat buckthorn with herbicide is late fall when the sap is flowing toward the roots.

      When I went to visit Suzette Lazotte’s permaculture garden, she gave me her address and detailed directions how to get there.  But I wouldn’t have needed either.  Just the name of the street would have been enough – her yard is very different from her neighbors’. 

      The bulk of Suzette’s yard is filled with densely placed plants mulched with wood chips and marsh hay.  Every available spot holds a plant with some purpose, and most plants have more than one purpose.  For example, vetch, indigo, lupine and wild senna all have flowers which attract pollinating insects to nearby food crops and they are all able to capture nitrogen from the air and make it available in the soil to fertilize adjacent plants.  At my mid-summer visit, a bed of just germinated lettuce was tucked into the shade of tall sunflowers, while everyone else’s lettuce had long since bolted and gone to seed.

      Permaculture, or permanent (agri)culture, means working with natural forces – wind, sun, and water – to provide food, shelter, water and other needs with minimum labor and without depleting the land. 

      One of Suzette’s primary goals in having a permaculture garden is to grow her family’s food closer to home, thus saving the resources involved in shipping, refrigeration and packaging.  She stresses that her objective isn’t to grow everything her family needs, but to grow what she can and then make an effort to buy locally from farmer’s markets for the rest.

      A basic premise of permaculture is to recognize the interrelationship between plants, animals, insects and humans.  The key is to select plants that have more than one function.  For example, a grape arbor attracts pollinators, can provide cover or a nesting spot for birds, provides shade for other plants or the home or patio, and produces fruit for humans and birds.  The leaves fall to the earth and are composted.  The vines can be used to make wreaths or other crafts.  The gardener’s responsibility in this web is to not use pesticides on the grapes that will harm the birds and insects that live there. 

      Water conservation is another important premise of permaculture gardening.  To retain moisture, Suzette lays down corrugated cardboard as a mulch and then covers it with marsh hay or wood chips.  She digs holes through this mulch when she wants to plant something.  During the dry month of July, she had watered only once, and her yard was a lush paradise while her neighbors’ lawns were crispy and brown.

      The beauty of permaculture is that you don’t have to embrace every principle and practice and you don’t need 40 acres to get started.  The principles can be applied even if your garden is just an apartment balcony.  You can pick and choose what appeals to you or what you feel able to do and know that you are making a start toward living in harmony with nature.

      There are many good books on permaculture and much good information on the internet.  One very interesting and well-written book is “Gaia’s Garden, A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture” by Toby Hemenway.

      Permaculture, coined from “permanent agriculture” may seem an obscure or unobtainable theory that doesn’t apply to the average yard or garden.  But there is no need to adopt the entire permaculture philosophy to derive some benefits.  Just a few of the concepts can be applied to make your yard and garden more beautiful and productive.

      Suzette said that when she looks at a landscape, her first thought is to cover the soil.  Mulch has many benefits including temperature regulation, moisture conservation, erosion protection, weed suppression, disease reduction and soil improvement.  Soil open to the sun and wind can become dry, hard and cracked, or blow away.

      An important permaculture concept is that of guilds, or plant groupings that assist each other in some way.  Many gardeners are familiar with the Native American triad of corn, beans and squash, a combination called the Three Sisters.  When planted in proximity, each plant supports the other two in some way.  The cornstalks provide a trellis for the beans.  The beans draw nitrogen from the air and make them available to the other plants in the soil.  The corn roots ooze sugars that feed the bacteria that produce this nitrogen.  The broad leaves of the squash plant shade the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds.  Each of these plants produces more food with less water and fertilizer than any one of the three planted in isolation.  The study of guilds is relatively new, but there are several of them for which information can be found in permaculture books.

      The book Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway talks of keyhole-shaped planting beds.  These are circular beds about 8 to 12 feet in diameter pierced on one side with a path to the middle.  The benefits are of this shape are many.  First, 50 square feet of planting space on a keyhole bed needs only 6 feet of pathway.  In a traditional single row planting, 50 square feet of planting space requires 40 square feet of path.  A raised bed of the same planting size requires 10 square feet of pathway.  Keyhole beds can be planted next to each other or around each other in increasingly intricate patterns to really maximize planting opportunities. 

      When a keyhole bed’s path is pointed toward the south and tall plants are located at the back, or northern edge, the bed creates a U-shaped sun bowl that traps warmth.  The microclimate inside is a great place for heat-loving plants.

      An significant principal of permaculture is water conservation.  This can be done in many ways including the aforementioned mulching, catching rain in rain barrels, building swales or berms to contour the land to make water flow where you need it, planting densely, planting water-conserving plants, and adding organic matter to soil so that it better holds water.  One interesting technique for keeping water in the soil longer is to dig trenches about 18 inches deep and bury woody tree trunks or rotten firewood.  If you’ve ever seen a rotting log in the woods, you know that they act like sponges, holding water long after the surrounding area has dried.  This will happen underground as well.  The wood will eventually decompose, adding organic matter and fertility to the soil.  

      There are many more simple permaculture techniques that can add beauty and fertility to your life.  Gaia’s Garden is the best and most interesting book I’ve found on the topic.

      Good gardeners know that before choosing a plant for a specific location, some research should be done as to what plants grow best in the conditions at the site.  You wouldn’t plant shade-loving hosta on the hot, dry south-facing side of the house anymore than you’d plant tulips in the deep shade of an evergreen or a cactus in the bog garden.

      There is one more factor to take into consideration.  We need to educate ourselves on which plants are considered invasive and to refrain from planting them.. 

      The Invasive Plant Association of Wisconsin (IPAW) categorizes plants this way:

• Invasive Plants are non-indigenous species or strains that become established in natural plant communities and wild areas, replacing native vegetation.
• Weeds are undesirable and troublesome plants growing in disturbed areas, especially cultivated ground.
• Potentially Invasive Plants are species that are invasive in parts of North America having similar climates and plant communities, and that are thought to have the potential to colonize and become invasive in Wisconsin.
• Indigenous means occurring naturally in a specific area or plant community; not introduced.

      Many of us are familiar with the most famous invasives:  purple loosestrife, buckthorn, reed canary grass, various thistles and garlic mustard.  But there are many more invasive plants that are sneaking into Wisconsin.  I was recently asked what the pretty yellow ground cover was that grows along Jackson north of Oshkosh.   The homeowner wondered if it would be a good plant for a berm alongside their road and asked if it grew from seeds or where they could buy it.  I knew without driving down Jackson that they were referring to bird’s-foot trefoil, a rapidly spreading plant that was planted along roadsides to control vegetation and that now has spread tremendously and crowded out native vegetation.  My reply to the question was a more tactful version of “DON’T PLANT THAT!” and then I suggested an alternative or two.

      You would be surprised at what plants are already considered invasive or have the potential to become so.  Here are a few plants considered invasive that you might not know about:  orange daylily, Norway maple, Russian olive, Queen Anne’s lace, forget-me-not, several honeysuckles, white poplar, multiflora rose, Canada goldenrod, tansy, common periwinkle, black locust, cattails, Japanese barberry, tree-of-heaven, burning bush or winged euonymus, white mulberry, willows, English ivy, European highbush cranberry, creeping bellflower, lily-of-the-valley, oxeye daisy, baby’s breath, yellow or water-flag iris and spearmint.  There are many more and I haven’t even listed the grasses and water plants.        

      You don’t have to memorize a long list of plants to avoid, but I urge you to take a look at IPAW’s website:  www.ipaw.org or the book Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest by Elizabeth Czarapata to at least get a feel for what plants might be invasive before you plant anything new in your yard.

      Just an eight-hour drive from the Fox Valley, Lima, Ohio, sits in the northwest corner of the state.  About the size of Oshkosh, Lima is similar to many other Midwest cities of its size.  But there is a jewel tucked into what was formerly a vacant lot filled with trash and choked with weeds near the downtown.

      The Lima Children’s Garden is different from and far more interesting and exciting than any other public garden I’ve visited.  On about one acre, there are over thirty theme gardens where visitors of all ages are encouraged to touch, smell and listen to the plants and the wildlife they attract.  The mini gardens are much more fun than just a bunch of plants lined up with their identifying plant markers stuck in the ground nearby. 

      For example, there is a butterfly-shaped flower bed outlined in brick.  The wings are planted with flowers that attract butterflies.

      Discarded saxophones, drums and trumpets sit in the music garden alongside plants with names like bugleweed, drumstick allium, bellflower, red trumpet and million bells.  The curving sidewalk through this area is painted white and black to resemble piano keys.

      The alphabet garden is decorated with large colorful alphabet letters.  Near each letter are one or more plants whose name starts with that letter, all the way from angelonia and bouncing bet through kale and lavender, to yarrow and zinnia.

      The round pizza garden is divided into slices, each of which features plants like basil, oregano and peppers that could be used on a real pizza.

      Inside a small enclosure entered by a miniature gate, is the rabbit chow garden.  Growing here is lettuce, carrots and cabbage.

      The zoo garden features plants with animal names – elephant ears, gooseneck loosestrife, zebra grass, turtlehead, monkey grass and many more.

      The body parts garden, planted inside the outline of a body which lies in front of a brightly painted metal headboard is appreciated by staff and patients of the nearby hospital.  Plants include lamb’s ear, inky finger coleus, bleeding heart, dragon’s blood sedum, beard tongue and lungwort.

      There is also a prairie garden, woodland garden, dinosaur garden and the highlight for any 5-year-old boy, a train topiary.  A bog garden is in the works. 

      Not only do children enjoy visiting the garden, many of them have contributed stepping stones and other garden art.  You’d think with all the variety in garden types that the Children’s Garden would be a hodgepodge of plants, but it all flows seamlessly in a garden entertaining for children and beautiful and relaxing for adult visitors.

      The Lima Children’s Garden is worth visiting again and again.  If you don’t get a chance to visit, use some of these ideas to make your own garden more fun and interesting for your children and grandchildren.