Pottery Barn Color for Your Garden - ECOCHIC Is More Natural Than You Think!

ECOCHIC MaryAnn Fink combines Pottery Barn flair with an Eco-friendly focus as she interprets Pottery Barn Style (PBS) IN THE GARDEN.  MaryAnn believes the PB catalog is more than an invitation to shop; it is also a refection of our inner desire to correlate colors as we get in sync with seasonal shifts.  This presentation quenches our thirst for color and encourages appreciation for natural style.

A Growing Investment: TREES- Increase the Green Value of Your Property While You Put Money In the Bank!

Can you afford to invest in your own real estate? Can you afford not to? Landscaping can bring a recovery value of 100 to 200 percent at selling time. (Source: Money Magazine) The addition of properly selected and placed trees adds to property value and saves you money.  A single urban tree can provide up to $273 a year in air conditioning, pollution fighting, erosion and storm water control, as well as wildlife shelter benefits.( Source: American Forests.) MaryAnn Fink, Certified Arborist and ambassador for the Landscape Plant Development Center, discusses the many of the newest tree and shrub cultivars that are coming to market and their multidimensional value to the industry and the homeowner!   

Build A Better Butterfly Garden

The Build A Better Butterfly Garden presentation focuses on creating a personalized butterfly garden that attracts the homeowner as well as butterflies.  MaryAnn Fink, North American Butterfly Association member introduces specific butterflies with information on host plants as well as the nectar options that work well in the lower Midwest.  She combines butterfly identification, with plant selection and cultural information.  Focusing on easy care and pretty, she used color, texture and combination suggestions as the foundation to build a butterfly garden.   

Natural Gardening – Make it a Habit (tat)”

Create a positive environment for people, birds and other possible wildlife residents!  Encouraging a shift in the way that we perceive our shared living space, MaryAnn Fink, Nation Wildlife Federation Ambassador offers no excuses for my love of “cheep” entertainment.  Large areas or small spaces, I encourage creating a personal link to the natural world with life’s basic and beautiful, easy care and reliable plants.

Conservation (Begins) @ Home:

Whether creating a butterfly or rain garden using native landscaping, using organic fertilizers, or removing invasive plants from your property, every little thing we do on our properties makes an environmental difference.  MaryAnn Fink, Conservation Specialist offers an overview of the Conservation @ Home program and its certification process.  This is an opportunity for land and homeowners that have incorporate natives into their landscape and cultivated spaces to be recognized for their effort.  It also encourages the creation and protection of “mini nature havens” that utilizes native plants.

What Not To (Plant) – Where!

Merely because you see a plant thriving in a difficult situation doesn’t mean it is a perfect companion plant in your landscape! There are a number of plants that spread so aggressively as to warrant noting and avoid their use in all but the most prudent situations.  MaryAnn Fink, Environmental Horticulture Consultant, discusses "Invasive" plants have become a part of the American landscape and have become a difficult and serious issue.  Not all exotic plants are a problem.  And, not all native plants deserve a free pass to the cultivated landscape!  

Plants Have Personalities

If so many pests are out there, how can we have beautiful landscapes with good natured plants? Which plants are tough enough for the job but able to be good team players?  MaryAnn Fink, Environmental Horticulture Consultant, discusses plants that don't wait passively to be ravaged by pests; instead they accept the job and show case their natural aptitude, strong work ethics and team skills.  Learn more about these desirable attributes so you can employ these hard workers in your landscape!

Let’s Get Personal – Make Your Landscape a “Homescape”

Your home represents your taste and style, and your landscape can do the same.   Meeting your family’s unique needs with a landscape places you as a homeowner in an integral roll in the creation of your landscape. MaryAnn Fink, Environmental Horticulture / Exterior Design Consultant discuss personalizing, details and meeting the functional demands of your family. 

IN the Dark About Shade?

MaryAnn Fink, shares her personal appreciation for shade gardening, specifically how it has connected her to what that make her feet slow down and heart beat fast. 
Like so many gardeners, for years she considered shade a problem in the garden.  But more and more, it has become an opportunity to develop a delightful garden where delicate detailing can be appreciated. Just as amazing as a life long friendship, shade plants can be reliable and natural, offering comfort, satisfaction and inspiration.  Why not spend time noticing the intricacies of life and nature while enjoying a cool and relaxing retreat?  Problems become blessings when you can approach the situation with friends – green ones and great ones!

Water, Think Resource, Not Waste Product!

In the lower Midwest, we are blessed with waterways.  So many in fact that we sometimes experience wet springs, heavy down pours and occasional flooding.  However water is a precious and limited resource. In fact, only 3% of the world's water is fresh, and less than one third of 1% is available for human use. MaryAnn Fink, Environmental Horticulturalist discusses how the green industry as well as home owners can benefit from this water awareness trend. 

Fairy Nice Size Gardens; Mini, Door Step and Pocket Gardens

Many people only have a little time, or only have a small space- and some of us can just imagine how fun it would be to just keep it simple!  Downsizing the garden doesn’t mean decreasing the interest- in fact- “fairy” small details would be missed in a large garden.   Join MaryAnn Fink, Environmental Horticulturist and Child-At-Heart as she explores shrinking space issues and the pleasure in playing with small scale gardening,

Made In the USA- American Beauties™ - A Natural Choice For the Home Landscape!

The American Beauties™ collection is the groundbreaking new native plant program that creates attractive and successful solutions for homeowners to attract desirable wildlife to the garden.  MaryAnn Fink, Environmental Horticultural Consultant and Ambassador for National Wildlife Federation introduces easy to use trees, shrubs, vines, grasses and wildflowers that are beautiful and good for wildlife for the lower Midwest
American Beauties™ is a plant selection program, developed by the unique partnering of wholesale growers, North Creek Nursery and Pride’s Corners Farms that not only benefits the retailer by providing quality plant material but also helps support the National Wildlife Federation.  MaryAnn spotlights many of her favorite native selections for the landscape and their cultural needs in cultivated spaces.

Additional Upcoming topics:

• Going Live- Attracting Living Entertainment to your door
  Gardening Turn Offs or Turn Off Here/ Outdoor relaxation techniques
  Walk Away Gardening- Make it Simple and Easy
  Exterior Motives – Motivating Homeowners To See the Landscape With Fresh Eyes
  Landscape Counselor: Relationship Issues
  Eating Out- Adding Edibles to the Landscape
  Lake Effect- A Personal Refection
  OK to Be A Late Bloomer-Fall Gardening