Dispatch Spring Home and Garden Show 2016

Garden Friends
We challenge the traditional garden aesthetic by approaching the garden as art and promote sustainability to create unique, timeless landscapes. By embracing the complexity of nature and ecology as inspiration for landscape design, we create a more sustainable future.

Inspiration may come from birds, music, or poetry. Animals and bugs live with us, in and around our homes. How do we reveal and enhance this relationship? Our inspiration for this garden derives for our appreciation of one of Ohio’s most threatened species, the bat.

However, you may feel about bats, the one truth is that they are one of the most beneficial friends in your garden. If we can provide bats food, water, and shelter. In return, these bats will eat more than 1,000 mosquitoes an hour while you are sleeping.

Since bats eat night flying insects, flowers that bloom late in the day or are night-scented can be planted in the garden. In addition, all bats depend on trees for habitat, so deforestation has played big role in the declining population. Planting native trees like Shagbark Hickory which has exfoliating bark and allowing older trees with hollows and cavities to stand provide important sheltering opportunities for bats.
We have constructed a sculpture as the focal point of the garden which functions as nesting houses for bats. This roosting habitat offers safe nursery for bats to raise their young pups.

Water is an essential element in creating wildlife habitat for our garden friends. A bubbling fountain brings movement, sound, and tranquility to the space, while providing us opportunities to interact with nature.
When landscaping, please consider the other inhabitants of the garden. Embrace the ecology of the space to consider the larger context of the site. We creatively approach the landscape to confront today’s environmental challenges.