Issue No. 055         
January 2013
Wyatt Farms Newsletter
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Greetings!

It is hard to believe that its already 2013!  Now that the rush of the Holiday season is over, its a great time to reflect on the passing year.  2012 was filled with so many great adventures for Wyatt Farms. 
Construction on the artist studio was completed and became the home for pARTners in CLAY and Equinimatas. We couldn't ask for better neighbors.

We hosted the 2nd Annual Farm to Fork Dinner, a hugely successful dinner for those wishing to experience truly local and fresh foods grown by local farmers and prepared by very talented local chefs.  This meal brings awareness to the benefits of healthy eating, supporting the local economy, reducing our carbon foot print, and so much more. 
We lent a helping hand with the 2012 SC Festival of Flowers Topiary Display.  Katherine Rowe spent endless hours with local volunteers, Greenwood City Employees, and the Greenwood area Master Gardeners to create the most amazing Topiaries.  This was such a learning experience for all of us and one we will cherish for years to come.
We also added three goats to our Farm. Jump Rope, Easter Egg and Pineapple have been fun additions. If only I could keep them out of the Roses.  
In 2012, we donated over $50,000 of our goods and services to community fund raisers, charities, events and festivals.  We are so proud to be an active part of Greenwood.  It is such a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. 
We have enjoyed celebrating your gardening successes with you and trying to help with those gardening trials.  We hope to continue to serve you in 2013.
 
 
As I look forward to 2013, I am excited and invigorated.  I anticipate many great things to come.  At the Garden Center, we are focusing on Spring and all the preparation that comes with that.  Seeds, Garden Tools and supplies, etc.  We attend Market next weekend where we will search for the best pots, garden accessories, and necessities.  If there is a Garden item that you wish to see us carry or one that you would like us to continue to carry, please let us know.
In the Gift Shop, we hope to turn our focus to the many talents that Greenwood and South Carolina have to offer, as we increase our inventory of one-of-a-kind items created by local artists as well as antiques or as I like to call them "perfectly imperfect" pieces to compliment your home and garden.  If there is something that you wish to see at Wyatt Farms, please let us know.
On the grounds, we hope to extend our Garden area in 2013.  There are plans to add another building to our property for a local business, with that construction we hope to complete a little more landscaping and bring back our cut flower garden.
Lastly, I really wish to see a cafe or restaurant at Wyatt Farms.  Although it may not be completed in 2013, this is my wish for the future.    
 
 
I hope you and yours are filled with great health and happiness throughout this new year. 


Happy Gardening and Happy New Year;

Bess

 

        JANUARY AND FEBRUARY ARE LANDSCAPE DESIGN MONTHS!!
                                Landscape Design Services

                                             
wyatt farms pictureWe are a full service Design, Install, and Maintenance company. We can help you come up with a landscape design for your yard that suits your family's needs.  We use Computer-Aided Design (CAD) programs so you can easily see the design on paper and many of the plants that we design with are right here in our nursery for you to see, touch and smell. We also have a professional installation and maintenance crew to help you create your landscape and keep it looking beautiful.


     Schedule an appointment with Wyatt soon to plan the garden
     you have always wanted.

864-227-8861

Winter Planning
by Lise Funderburg
Garden Design; Winter 2012

For those who mourn the end of the gardening season, here's some good news: Plants may go dormant in winter, but people don't have to.  In fact, certain landscaping projects are actually better suited to the off-months.  To begin with, there's planning.  With the perspective that comes from distance - less use and fewer attention-grabbing maintenance chores - you can revisit existing designs and reconsider plant palettes.  And with the bones of the garden exposed, you can easily see what's out of balance and where you might want to add in structure or visual texture, whether in the form of plants or hardscaping.
"This is a good time to take a step back," says Judy Kameon, founder of Elysian Landscapes in Los Angeles, "to see what's working or not and make adjustments."  Where others scan southern California's winter landscape and see spent flowers and dried-out plants, Kameon sees opportunity.  "Its time to give everybody a haircut," she says, which means hard cutbacks to reinvigorate ornamental grasses, salvia, and roses.  And because the soil continues to be workable in her region, Kameon plants what she can, even though nursery availability is limited during winter months.  "You might not see a lot of immediate growth, " she says of the early settlers, "But the plants have time to establish , and so the minute it warms up the results are phenomenal."
Summer is landscape designer Rosalia Sanni's favorite season but its sensory riches can mask underlying issues.  "There's so much to look at,"  Sanni says, "the smells, the sounds , the movement of wildlife, butterflies, and water."  Once that life and activity fades away, what's left behind is the garden's structure, says Sanni, who works for the Greenwich, Connecticut -based Doyle Herman Aesign Associates.
"When I'm seeing it in winter, even though it's the bleakest time of year, I can really understand flow and the way the spaces are laid out and connected,"  Sanni observes. She can also make an immediate assessment of which sight lines to keep clear and which to screen out.  In one direction, you may want to borrow the view of a neighbor's 200 year old stone wall, but in another, there might be a giant water tower that should be obscured at all times.  Sanni has the expertise to look for such things even when trees are leafed out, but it's often much easier for clients to commit a portion of the budget to those issues when the potential eyesore is in plain sight.
In Chicago, Steve Gierke, a senior associate at Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, uses the weather-bound indoor season to stir creative juices.  He reviews Garden photos he's taken throughout  the year to look at where plant compositions might have fallen out of balance.  He ventures out to local botanical gardens and arboretums to see how characteristics like bark texture and habit have turned summer wallflowers into winter stunners.  And he catches up on design magazines and seed catalogs that have piled up, taking note of the best plant releases from the previous season.  (Since new hybrids occasionally don't have the vigor to come back or hold their bloom color over time, there's a plus in waiting out the debut run."  "If you're researching in winter," Gierke explains, "theoretically, they've already had a year in trial."
Even for homeowners starting from scratch, hiring a designer in winter means you're not competing with such high-season demands as installation supervision.  "Any client who has me designing in the winter has my undivided attention," says Sanni.  They also have the benefit of her cabin fever.  "In winter, I get the most aspirational and the most inspired because I'm dying for everything to come back to life.  "Last winter, many parts of the United States saw freakishly warm temperatures, of which savvy designers and contractors took full advantage.  In Connecticut, DHDA dug pools straight through the year, and the Tenafly, New Jersey, firm Paul Keyes Associates, which offers both planning and contracting services was able to complete all manner of hardscaping projects without having to compete with clients wanting to be in the garden.  "We do a lot of construction in winter," says Paul Keyes.  It's a good time to put in a new patio or brick pavers or a barbecue walkway, as long as it's not freezing.  When it' freezing, you do more damage than good.  Plants are mostly made of water, so they 're more likely to snap or break.  It's kind of like breaking an icicle, even the grass get's damaged."
But even when the ground is frozen, significant horticultural work can be done.  In St. Paul, Minnesota, Where more than 150 days of the year the temperature drops below 32 degrees, plant ecologist Douglas Owens-Pike takes advantage of weather-slowed growth to eradicate woody invasives.
"A big issue here in the upper Midwest is buckthorn," says Owens-Pike, founder of EnergyScapes, which designs landscapes that promote water conservation, low maintenance, and biodiversity.  Uncontrolled buckthorn (both common and glossy) can grow 30 ft tall and wide, he says, and will kill forests by growing up under their canopies and out-competing the native plants for resources.  Owens-Pike and his team apply a broad-spectrum herbicide to the imported hedge that has run amok, but the treatment is only effective before April, when the plant's sap starts to rise.
Meadows, too, can be better managed when grasses and annuals have died back, revealing nascent trees overlooked the previous spring.  "You'll see all the most beautiful over story trees," Owens-Pike says to the young interlopers, "Oak, cherry, basswood." Right tree, wrong place: exposed seedlings can be removed either by cutting or herbicide. 
Cold-weather season is also the perfect time to relocate larger trees and shrubs, says Keyes, who does his balling, burlaping, and moving after the leaves drop but before the ground freezes.  'We do it when the plants are dormant,"  he says.  "it's like a patient under anesthesia: its a lot less stressful to move the trees at that time."
And then there's major pruning, which Keye's prefer to do when trees are defoliated.  "You can really see the architecture of the plant as well as rubbing branches or damaged limbs," he says.  "people think the best time is summer, when everything's in full leaf."  That's a good time to nip, but not for establishing structure."
One last form of winter planning is to take on all those miscellaneous tasks of upkeep and upgrading.  Have lawn furniture cleaned , repaired, and repainted or updated with new upholstery.  (New slipcovers, for example can take six weeks from order to delivery).  Replace the old riding mower or upgrade to a more efficient pool pump.  Select and order long lead items like specialty tiles or outdoor kitchen appliances.  seek permission for work requiring municipal approval, which typically includes fences, construct in historically protected areas, and just about anything that requires digging.  Do all this and you'll be ready to break ground as soon as it thaws.




 
 





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Sincerely,

Bess and Wyatt Thompson and Katherine Rowe
Wyatt Farms
550 Center Street
On Center Street Just North of Lakeview School
Greenwood, South Carolina 29649
www.wyattfarms.com
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864-229-6252
wyattfarms@ymail.com
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