Hello Good People!

Carol Bowles, here.  I’m your blog mis­tress extra­or­di­naire at Land­scape and Gar­den Today ( or at least I aspire to extra­or­di­naire).

Cur­rently I live in North Car­olina, on the coastal plain, in the mid­dle of basi­cally Nowheresville.  This is lovely, quiet farm coun­try with lots of time and space for explor­ing our timely top­ics.  It is a far from the hew and cry of the Wash­ing­ton DC area that I called home for almost 30 years, but it affords me an envi­ron­ment to pon­der and write.

I  fin­ished my pro­gram in Land­scape Archi­tec­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia (Go Dawgs!) in 2004, finally grad­u­at­ing in 2006.  Me and those out­stand­ing Eng­lish requirements..geeeze.  And here I am writ­ing for a liv­ing!!  Who knew?  Actu­ally, my sage Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Jonathan Evans pre­dicted such a far-fetched (at the time) thing.

Going to UGA was a life chang­ing expe­ri­ence in so many ways, and chief amongst them was an intro­duc­tion to sus­tain­abil­ity.  I had been a sub­ur­ban land­scape and gar­den buff, but like most peo­ple, clue­less about just what,  and how the things I dug, mowed, planted, watered and fer­til­ized changed the envi­ron­ment, for bet­ter or worse.  Frankly, it just didn’t mat­ter at that point.  If it looked good, well, then it was good.  Yes, basi­cally clue­less and uncon­cerned when it came to lov­ing Mother Earth.  Oh, how times have changed!

I could men­tion a mil­lion things I learned, my won­der­ful pro­fes­sors, my bright, adept and lots younger than me fel­low stu­dents, but my task now is to write about the newest trends in land­scape archi­tec­ture, gar­dens and all that goes into a green out­door world, so that you can make every gar­den­ing or land­scape effort one that pleases you and pro­vides sus­tain­abil­ity for future gen­er­a­tions.

The land­scape ecol­ogy, plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a  native plant empha­sis, , stormwa­ter man­age­ment, con­structed wet­lands,  ero­sion con­trol & grad­ing, gar­den design, sus­tain­able site plan­ning, and oh so many more things jam packed into 5 won­der­ful years has yielded a wealth of knowl­edge that has been locked up in this brain of mine.  I’m focused on shar­ing it with you.

Sus­tain­abil­ity, urban ecol­ogy, water resources and going green out­doors are what the empha­sis is of this blog and our web­site, Landscape&GardenToday.com. The need is greater than ever, and thank­fully there is more inter­est than ever, too.  With the move to going green,  peo­ple are inter­ested in pro­tect­ing the earth and still enjoy their homes.  All we need is a lit­tle know-how.  This is our rai­son d’être.

I have found that giv­ing this infor­ma­tion to you at LandscapeandGardenToday.com and this blog has become the new pas­sion in my life, and makes the time I spend gath­er­ing and com­pil­ing this mate­r­ial on sus­tain­able prac­tices for your land­scape and gar­den even sweeter.

I look for­ward to many hours with you.  Please send your com­ments, sug­ges­tions, respect­ful rot­ten toma­toes, etc.  I love feed­back, and I’m sure you have some­thing impor­tant I will want to know.

See you @ the blog!

Carol

For some authen­tic­ity, account­abil­ity and cred­i­bil­ity, I’m post­ing some of  the hon­ors, accom­plish­ments and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions I have accumulated

Edu­ca­tion

Bach­e­lors of Land­scape Archi­tec­ture (’06)

Sigma Lambda Alpha, National Honor Soci­ety, Land­scape Architecture

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions

Cer­ti­fied Res­i­den­tial Rain Gar­den Spe­cial­ist, NC State Uni­ver­sity, Bio & Ag Engi­neer­ing

Ero­sion and Sed­i­ment Con­trol and Water Qual­ity, Best Man­age­ment Prac­tices. Rock­dale County, GA

NCI Char­rette Man­age­ment and Facil­i­ta­tion Cer­tifi­cate  ( albiet a very early version)

Design Awards

Cam­pus as Arbore­tum Design Com­pe­ti­tion,  first place

Charles E. Aguar Design Com­pe­ti­tion, finalist

Hiking/Biking Trails for Prince William County, Chevron Com­mu­nity Improve­ment Award

A word about adver­tis­ing

There are new fed­eral guide­lines about telling read­ers that I will be receiv­ing com­mis­sions on any links that direct you to prod­ucts or com­mer­cial web­sites.  Some of these are pay per click, mean­ing if you click them I get a penny or so.  Oth­ers will give me a small com­mis­sion if you buy some­thing.  Most are in that cat­e­gory.    I don’t think of this as a com­mer­cial ven­ture, although I’m not at all opposed to mak­ing money.  This is my liveli­hood though, and a girl has to pay her bills.  But, frankly, you would laugh if you call this a mak­ing a  liv­ing.   At this point it is a labor of love   

Hope­fully you find the adver­tis­ing or prod­ucts rel­e­vant, so then this is a win-win sit­u­a­tion.  I get to write and you get to read.  Fair enough?