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Nature’s Way Resources owner John Ferguson, “The Lazy Gardener” Brenda Beust Smith and Pablo Hernandez welcome your feedback and are so grateful to the many horticulturists who contribute their expertise

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“Often perceived as simple gatherings of plant enthusiasts, garden clubs play a crucial role in helping to preserve the character and scenic beauty of communities across America.”

— Scenic America

Hope for those of us with tiny yards! (Lauren Simmons photos)

WILL VERTICAL GARDENING

BE A GAME-CHANGER?

BY BRENDA BEUST SMITH 

FEW AMONG US HAVE enough growing space! The PlazaGarden Club Backyard Garden Tourmay offer you an expansion possibility with even non-members’ clever ideas such asLauren Simmon’s’ rerouted plants! 

As Lauren explains: “Vertical gardening has been a game changer in my small backyard kitchen garden, allowing me to grow exponentially more in less space — tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, pole beans, watermelon, and squash — using minimal space.

“Three large stationary arch trellises and numerous moveable panel trellises have provided so much flexibility. I am able to reposition the trellises to accommodate sunlight requirements across seasons for different plants. They facilitate crop rotation to help prevent nutrient depletion of my soil. Another advantage: moveable trellises allow you to easily change the aesthetic look of your garden.”

Lauren‘s now growing indeterminate tomato varieties including: Sweet Millions, Yellow Pear, and Sun Sugar. Also National Pickling and Burpless Beauty cucumbers, Sugar Pod snow peas and Kentucky Wonder pole beans. Past successes include: Malabar spinach, yard-long beans, and luffa gourds. But there are challenges:

• Plants grown on trellises can become overly heavy and could potentially fall due to the extra weight. Solution: additional support poles as the season progresses.
• Wind: Increased surface area makes them more susceptible to damage. Solution: Pruning to allow more air flow to decrease chance of damage.
• Pests can spread rapidly along trellises, although they can be easier to spot and remove. Constant monitoring helps.
• Finding affordable trellises. Lauren’s suggestions: home improvement stores, online marketplaces, garden supply stores, and even resale shops. Make your own using repurposed materials like bamboo stakes, wire fencing, twine or trimmed branches.

• HUGE TIP O’ TROWEL TO LEAGUE CITY GARDEN CLUB, this week hosting the The Texas Garden Clubs, Inc., District IV Spring Convention (not open to public). Want to remind folks LCGC’s brought the national spotlight to the Greater Houston Area (con’t below . . . ) (Lisa Lofaro photo)

In 2024 LEAGUE CITY GARDEN CLUB won the National Garden Club‘s 1st Place Award and NGC’S $1,000 prize for LCGC’s wildflower median plantings along League City’s sections of Highway 96 (pictured above) and HWY 3, creating beauty and a wildlife feast from this once-lengthy barren stretch of mowed weeds. The rest of the story.

P.S. In case your club would like to celebrate,

Nat’l Garden Club Week is always the first full week in June.

• WANT TO PLANT WILDFLOWERS? Step One: realize not all wildflowers are ideal for ALL home gardens even though they may be in nurseries and seed catalogs. Best source: your area Native Plant Society chapter. Research wildflowers in question before planting. Good start: a “Texas Highways Helpful Guide.” For more, google: Texas Wildflower Posters and your local Native Plant Society of Texas chapters — A wealth of info! Houston NPSOT hosts a Wildscapes Workshop and Plant Sale every fall.

ATTN. GARDEN/PLANT GROUPS —  Nature’s Way Resources offers free guided tours of NWR’s extensive nursery/soil/mulch facilities for garden clubs, plant societies and other plant-oriented, organized groups. As usual, NWR’s now-expanded meeting site is free to above groups. Reservations a must for both. Great time to visit!

• SUBMITTING CALENDAR EVENTS?: These will be in next upcoming newsletter ONLY IF SUBMITTED IN OUR EXACT FORMAT they may be held until can be reformatted.

John’s Corner

NEWS FROM THE WONDERFUL WORLD

OF SOIL AND PLANTS 

Subject:  Bayer/Monsanto  Book Good Nature  Product safety

 To paraphrase a few verses from the book of Proverbs: If one does not obtain knowledge about a subject, they will not make wise choices and will suffer the consequences!

 I have often mentioned the corruption in the EPA (Enhanced Profit Agency). For years the EPA allowed toxic sewage sludge to be used as fertilizer to grow food crops as we discussed last week, harming tens of thousands of people if not millions of Americans. 

They are at it again, working for Bayer (Monsanto) of glyphosate (a known carcinogen).  

 From the Organic Consumers Association newsletter: “Eleven corrupt State Attorneys General from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, and South Dakota, have petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of Bayer (Monsanto), Syngenta (ChemChina), and Corteva (Dow-DuPont-Pioneer) to take away your right to know about pesticide toxicity—and your right to sue these companies for failure to warn.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency, long controlled by Monsanto, won’t admit that Roundup causes cancer, so they don’t require the weed killer to be labeled as a carcinogen. Bayer’s theory, submitted by the eleven State Attorneys General, is that if the EPA ignores the cancer risks so should the states and the courts.”

LEARN MORE ABOUT ROUNDUP & CANCER: ‘Watch the documentary ‘Into the Weeds’

Glyphosate Poses Widespread Risks To Female Fertility and Reproductive Health

Pamela Ferdinand, U.S. Right To Know:

“Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, disrupts female hormones and damages the ovaries and uterus in ways that can make it more difficult for women to get pregnant, according to a new review of human and animal research.

The study, published in Reproductive Sciences this week (March 21, 2025), also found that glyphosate may be tied to polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, due to its endocrine-disrupting capabilities and reproductive toxicity.

PCOS is a hormonal disorder that affects the ovaries, fertility, and periods, among other symptoms. Endometriosis is an often painful condition when tissue similar to the uterine lining (endometrial tissue) grows outside the uterus. Both conditions are among the leading causes of infertility.”

Read more about the multiple toxic effects of glyphosate exposure

Another report in the Sustainable Pulse newsletter is on a study paid for by the organization “Friends Of The Earth” on the new Round Up formulations, since the EPA will not do it.

The study found that the new formulation is 45 times more toxic to human health, on average, following long-term, chronic exposure. “Not only do several Round Up products still contain glyphosate, but eight new Round up products contain chemicals of dramatically greater concern.”

On a positive note, I finished reading an interesting book this week. I have talked about the benefits of being in nature and from gardening and soil many times. This is the best summary of all the recent research in an easy-to- understand format.

Kathy teaches the importance of nature and gardening in a story book style. She covers all the latest research on the benefits of nature and gardening on human health and longevity. She talks about each of the senses of sight, smell, sound and touch found in nature and how they affect us.

Katherine Willis is a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford.

GOOD NATURE – Why Seeing, Smelling, Hearing, and Touching Plants is Good for Our Health, by Kathy Willis, Pegasus Books, 2024, ISBN: 978-1-63936-764-1

From the publisher:

A ground-breaking investigation into newly discovered evidence showing that remarkable things happen to our bodies and our minds when our senses connect with the natural world.

We all take for granted the idea that being in nature makes us feel better. But if you were a skeptical scientist—or indeed any kind of skeptic—who wanted hard scientific evidence for this idea, where would you look? And how would that evidence be gathered?

It wasn’t until Dr. Kathy Willis was asked to contribute to an international project looking for the societal benefits we gain from plants that she stumbled across a study that radically changed the way she saw the natural world. In the study there was clear proof that patients recovering from gall bladder operations recovered more quickly if they were looking at trees.

In fact, in the last decade there has been an explosion of “proof” that incredible things happen to our bodies and our minds when our senses interact with the natural world. In Good Nature, Kathy Willis takes the reader on a journey with her to dig out all the experiments around the world that are looking for this evidence—experiments made easier by the new kinds of data being collected from satellites and big-data biobanks. Having a vase of roses on your desk or a green wall in your office makes a measurable difference to your well-being; certain scents in room diffusers genuinely can boost your immune system; and, in a chapter that Kathy calls “Hidden Sense,” we learn that touching organic soil has a significant effect on the healthiness of your microbiome.

What is remarkable about this book is how its revelations should be commonsense—schools should let children play in nature to improve their health and concentration; urban streets should have trees—and yet it reveals just how difficult it is to prove this to businesses and governments. As Kathy Willis says in her narrative, “We now know enough to self-prescribe in our homes, offices or working spaces, gardens, and when out walking. However small these individual actions might be, overall, they have the potential to provide a large number of health benefits. And we need to be encouraging others to do the same. Nature is far more than just something that is useful for our health. It is not a dispensable commodity. It is an inherent part of us.”

Often after working in our gardens and washing our hands, we apply some kind of hand lotion or cream. Have you ever wondered if it is safe? Now you can find out. The Environmental Working Group has laboratory tested thousands of products.

One can type the product name into the link below to find out what is in the products you purchase and if they are dangerous. They have tested 126,347 different products from 6,042 brands, and only 2,485 were safe, which is less than 2%.

www.ewg.org

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