Natural Yard Care workshops being offered in Bonney Lake

By Daniel Nash

The Courier-Herald

The first of three natural yard care workshops were held at the Bonney Lake Public Safety Building Wednesday Sept. 30. The event was sponsored by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and hosted by Natural Yard Care Program Coordinator Geoff Rinehart.

Future workshops will be held Oct. 14 and Oct. 28.

The first topic of the series was “’Right Plant, Right Place’ — Garden Design and Building Healthy Soil.” Rinehart and guest lecturer Greg Rabourn - host of “Yard Talk” on King County television and KUOW 94.9 FM — discussed how to plan and implement a beautiful, organic and low maintenance yard made up of mostly native plant growth.

“Hopefully you’ll take away that it’s not either-or,” Rabourn said. “You can have healthy wildlife and beautiful design and a low maintenance yard without compromising one for the others.”

Rabourn walked attendees through the process of drawing up a map of an existing yard, deciding where to make changes, selecting viable native plants and planting them successfully. After a short break, Rinehart led a presentation on determining what type of soil is in a yard and introducing more organic matter to the soil, which are both important variables in determining what plants can grow in a yard.

One of the most important rules? Grass must go, or at least be minimized.

“When you have natural landscape, it tends to require less and less maintenance as time goes on, because it’s very sustainable,” Rabourn said. “A grass lawn tends to go the other way: it needs a lot of attention from mowing and chemicals that becomes more of a demand with time.”

One example showed a home where owners reduced their grass to a narrow walkway that cut through a towering collection of plant life.

The idea of natural yard care is to create a self-sustaining native ecosystem contained on a single property. Animals that would be considered pests on a grass lawn, like moles or plant-eating bugs, no longer become a problem because they fit into a native ecosystem without defacing its beauty.

“Some people see bite marks in leaves and go ‘What’s eating my plants?’” Rabourn said. “I look and go ‘I wonder what life I’m supporting?’ It’s a little different perspective.”

Workshops began in earnest in October 2007 in various locations of Pierce County. The benefits the Health Department promote are threefold: fewer health hazards from improper chemical use, fewer chemical fertilizers draining into stormwater and a reduction in yard waste.

“If folks are able to reduce the amount of yard waste that goes into the compost stream, that saves everyone’s garbage disposal rates,” Rinehart said.

Future topics will be backyard composting and garden pest management.

Wednesday’s workshop was well attended, and space is limited. To reserve a space, call Rinehart at 253-798-4587 or e-mail grinehart@tpchd.org.

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