By Sue Leahy
Member-at-Large and Chairperson, Outreach Committee and Landscape Challenge
We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2021 Landscape Challenge is Amy Maddin in Webster Groves. Amy is a small animal veterinarian. Growing up, she always had an appreciation of nature. Her family was very outdoorsy, did a lot of hiking and her mom had a woodland garden so Amy became very familiar with woodland plants. When she and her wife, Molly, purchased their home in Webster, they immediately started removing honeysuckle from the back of the property. They also had a Tree of Heaven removed after it fell on the deck.
When Amy read Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy, she started realizing how important native plants were to the environment. Three years ago she & Molly cleared the honeysuckle from the hillside along the side of her driveway shaded by a Hackberry and an Elm and started planting some native woodland plants in that area. Their neighbor realized what they were doing and added some shade natives on the lower part of the hillside which was on his property. Amy wants to continue to add some shade natives to this area, but has already started solarizing an area on the other side of her house for another shade garden. They also removed a Tree of Heaven stump with liriope around it last summer that was in a sunnier area and started planting some sun-loving natives.
Amy’s mom has long been an Audubon supporter and told her about the BCH program so she had an evaluation completed last summer. She was already silver. There are still two Trees of Heaven that need to be removed. Once those are gone and there is more area planted in natives, a higher BCH rating can be attained.
Amy is excited about having her front yard planted with a formal native garden. The tree lawn is at least 6 feet wide, more than is usual, so she is working with the designer to select the final area to be solarized for planting that will definitely include at least part of the tree lawn.
The designer of the garden will be Wild Ones member, Erin Goss, who is a native plant specialist designer for Wallflower Design. She is a graduate of Meramec’s horticulture program and is an occasional speaker on native plant and design-related topics. She is looking forward to designing a formal, highly visible garden for this space.
