Garden Marcus and the Clover, 93 | Into the Garden Podcast

Plant of the Week:

Trillium repens, or the common clover

My lawn grass now has new visitors to make things more interesting.
Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash

Clover is such a heart-warming, basic plant. The most time consuming task on everyone’s first scavenger hunt at camp, it tends to capture fans early on.

That is, unless. one still thinks that a perfect lawn is a good thing.

Here’s hoping that we can all spread the word that monocultures don’t help anything, and the imperfect lawn, full of nitrogen fixing clover that attract bees is more of what we should all strive for.

But the striving part is the piece that is the easiest. Nothing to do more than stop throwing chems about and sit back and watch your lawn get more and more interesting as more and more plants make themselves at home.

Artist Karen Blair

You heard me mention my friend Karen Blair on the pod. Karen is a local Charlottesville artist who sponsors Into the Garden with Leslie

Have a look at what Karen can do— she worked with one of my listeners, Anne Brooks Rudzki, of Capital Roots Containers, and created this beautiful commission of Anne Brook’s garden.

Follow this link to see more of her paintings.

And follow her on Instagram here.

Garden Marcus

Garden Marcus caught my attention with his zen Instagram posts a couple of years ago. My favorites are when he starts talking about a plant, but then goes on to say “this reminds me …”

A perfect example is when he found a gourd or melon vine that was growing out of his compost bin. That’s cool to see (I love fun mysteries that grow in my compost piles) but the best is the “this reminds me” part…

“This reminds me that the life inside us yearns to grow. Even when we are faced with obstacles and we’re surrounded by barriers (which in this case was his compost bin), if we learn lessons and focus, we can persevere and grow through it. ”

— Garden Marcus