One Nature

Its peak Spring and we have so many plants waiting for you! Stop in today and support some of our independant growers working to provide local plants from local seed for our local ecosystems! By choosing locally grown native plants, you’re doing more than beautifying your garden — you’re helping strengthen regional agriculture, support small independent growers, and restore the ecological health of our communities. Local plants are better adapted to our climate, provide critical habitat and food sources for pollinators and wildlife, and help rebuild resilient ecosystems from the ground up. Every purchase helps keep native seed stewardship, sustainable growing practices, and ecological restoration rooted right here in our region.

We caught our third swarm of the season in our demonstration garden today — this one in a peach tree. Honey bees aren’t native to North America, and we’re careful not to confuse beekeeping with native pollinator conservation. Native bees and wasps are doing most of the real ecological work here. But the fact that our garden consistently attracts 2–3 swarms every year does feel like a sign that we’re building healthy habitat overall. Swarms are looking for landscapes with abundant forage, water, shelter, and ecological stability — and apparently our garden checks enough of those boxes to keep ending up on bees’ lists of preferred campsites. A strong hive can also produce 100+ pounds of honey in a good year, which makes honey bees a useful part of home food production systems. For us, they’re just one piece of a much bigger pollinator picture that includes native flowers, pesticide-free growing, nesting habitat, and supporting as much insect diversity as possible.

Take a tour of our nursery and new botanic garden! Open Wed-Sunday, 10-6. Mother’s Day Gift Cards are available!

New beautiful plants arrived in our nursery from @dragonflynurseries ! We are proud to partner with such amazing people growing native plants and using more-than-organic methods.

Great weather for a team day! Since moving in, we’ve been tackling ongoing drainage issues—so today we built a dry creek bed through the nursery. Looking forward to planting and incorporating #largewoodydebris in the weeks ahead. It feels good to strengthen the hydrologic connection to the small, unnamed brook along our southern border—a tributary of Fishkill Creek. It’s so inspiring to see what a small, dedicated, and skilled group of people can accomplish in just a single day. With the right mix of teamwork, knowledge, and effort, meaningful progress happens quickly—and it’s a reminder of how much impact is possible when everyone shows up ready to build something together.

Design Proposal: Reimagining the Reflecting Pool and Washington Monument This proposal envisions transforming the Reflecting Pool into a living wetland system inspired by organic, curvilinear forms—an ecological intervention that restores habitat, improves water quality, and reconnects the site to its natural context. At the terminus, the Washington Monument would be replaced with a bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), the tallest tree species native to the region, capable of reaching heights of approximately 150 feet. As a long-lived and resilient wetland species, the bald cypress would serve as both a symbolic and functional anchor for the landscape. #filltheswamp The tree’s growth timeline—roughly 200–250 years to peak height—REFLECTS the historic span of the United States, memorializing the long-term destruction the nation has caused. Rather than a static monument, the site becomes a living system that evolves over generations. If realized, this project would signal a shift toward ecological design at the highest level of civic space, modeling the kind of long-term environmental thinking necessary to support future generations.

The soil is warm and the time is right to bring herbaceous plants to the garden. Luckily, we have you covered. This year we are featuring pesticide-free growers in our nursery, starting the season off with @springhousenativeplants_ .Support small business, earth-friendly growing practices, and native plants! Many plants sold in our region, even those labeled “native,” are often grown through systems that rely on underpaid labor and the routine use of systemic pesticides. These practices not only perpetuate social inequities within agricultural workforces, but they can also undermine the very ecosystems gardeners are trying to support. Because systemic pesticides are absorbed into plant tissues, their pollen and nectar can carry harmful residues that poison pollinators like bees and butterflies. By being mindful of where our plants come from, we can choose options that support both environmental health and fair labor practices—helping ensure our gardens truly give back to the communities and ecosystems they’re part of.

This reclaimed brickscape will look even better when we are done building it—but it already holds its own. “Borrowed view” is the vocabulary word of the day. This music pavilion anchors a nearly complete three-year project, fortunate to draw in views of Storm King Mountain, Bannerman’s Castle, and a remarkable riverine oak–tulip forest. The concept of borrowed view—or shakkei—is a landscape strategy in which an artist incorporates elements beyond a garden’s boundaries into its composition. Distant features—mountains, trees, sky—are intentionally framed or aligned so they read as part of the garden itself, extending spatial depth and softening the line between constructed space and its surroundings. Across traditions, this idea takes on different forms: in Zen gardens, it is handled with restraint, where minimal elements like rocks and gravel are composed to align with distant hills, making those outside features feel essential and continuous with the space. In Islamic gardens, by contrast, borrowed views are more deliberately framed—drawn through arches, along axial paths, or reflected in water—so the external landscape is curated within an ordered, symbolic geometry rather than dissolved into it. In contemporary native plant landscapes, the strategy becomes ecological as well as visual, with artists using regional plant communities to blend a garden into surrounding meadows or forests, softening or even erasing boundaries altogether. Seen together, these approaches show how borrowed view expands a garden beyond its limits in distinct but related ways—dissolving boundaries, framing them, or merging them into a living whole.

Thanks to @padeasla for organizing such an outstanding conference last week along the Delaware’s coastline, highlighting a range of intertidal solutions to rising sea levels. Tours were led by Delaware’s Coastal Resilience Design Studio, Sea Grant Program, Shoreline and Waterway Management Department, and the Delaware Botanical Garden, offering valuable on-the-ground perspectives. It was especially encouraging to see how living shorelines are gaining traction—and becoming more cost-effective to implement. These approaches offer compelling alternatives to the large-scale infrastructure projects we often see imagined in NYC, and feel far more applicable to the Hudson Valley. On the intertidal Hudson River, living shoreline strategies hold real promise as a way to mitigate sea level rise while preserving the river’s dynamic ecology. By combining native plantings, tidal wetlands, and natural materials, these systems can absorb wave energy, reduce erosion, and adapt over time as water levels change. In a setting like the Hudson—where hard infrastructure can disrupt habitat adaptation—living shorelines offer a more flexible, ecologically grounded approach that supports long-term shoreline stability and biodiversity.

The best gardens unfold slowly—woven together over time as new plants and forms emerge. Travel back with us to last summer (swipe to see). Our client had already spent years establishing their garden, but wanted to layer in new ideas. The early plantings were primarily non-native; more recently, we’ve introduced native additions from our nursery. This winter, we installed a warm hemlock wood fence, and this week, we re-aligned the paths to highlight the most exceptional horticultural specimens. This small, intimate city garden feels even more special now.

In our nursery today: Virginia Bluebell. In the wild, it’s a floodplain and woodland-edge native—think rich, alluvial soils, plenty of organic matter, and reliable spring moisture. You’ll see it thriving along streams and in low, shaded woods in places like the Hudson Valley. It emerges early, takes advantage of the sunlight before the canopy closes, flowers, sets seed, and then goes dormant by early summer. Classic spring ephemeral behavior. In the garden, it’s health comes from mimicking those conditions. Give it partial shade (morning sun is fine), moist but well-drained soil, and don’t skimp on organic matter. It’s not a plant for hot, dry borders. Once established, it’s surprisingly durable and will slowly spread into nice colonies. One thing to remember: it disappears (ephemeral). Pair it with later-emerging perennials—hosta, ferns, or something equally polite—to fill the space after the bluebells go dormant. It’s not flashy for long, but when it’s in bloom...

Now in our nursery: Lady Fern (Athyrium filix-femina)!! What better way to enjoy a rainy weekend than planting some ferns? Invite a Lady Fern into your shade garden, and you’re not just planting greenery—you’re welcoming a calm, graceful presence that seems to soften everything around it. Groves of ferns help stabilize soil, retain moisture, and enrich nutrients through their decaying fronds, supporting overall forest health. It also provides shelter and microhabitats for insects and small animals, contributing to biodiversity and indicating a stable, undisturbed ecosystem. Growing 2–5 feet tall, this fern unfurls delicate, lacy fronds quietly, brightening dark corners and complementing bolder plants nearby. It thrives in the cool comfort of shade and moist soil, where it settles into neat, elegant clumps that feel both airy and composed. Give it the right conditions, and it responds with steady, low-maintenance beauty. It spreads slowly through its roots, expanding with patience rather than taking over. While it can tolerate some sun or drier soil, it truly flourishes where it feels sheltered and nourished. When frost arrives, it quietly lets its fronds go, resting through winter before returning fresh and vibrant in spring—ready to bring its gentle, natural charm back to your garden.