Herself’s Houston Garden

The Woodlands Garden Club is accepting scholarship applications for the 2011-2012 school year.

The $1000 scholarship is open to students living in The Woodlands or nearby vicinity.

We consider majors in: Floriculture, Landscape Design, Horticulture, Botany, Plant Pathology, Forestry, Agronomy, Environmental Concerns, City Floraculture Planning, Wildlife Science, Landscape Architecture or Land Management.

Applicants must also maintain a 3.0 grade point average.

The Woodlands Garden Club will assist and sponsor a student to apply for scholarships given by:

Houston Federation of Garden Clubs for $1000.00. District IV
State of Texas Garden Clubs for $1500.00
Texas State Garden Clubs for amounts varying from $1000.00 to $3000.00 National Council of Garden Clubs which was $3,500.00 this year.

For more information on the scholarships and application information contact Jeanette West

Last year’s winner won over $5000 in scholarships.

Filing deadline: Oct. 1, 2010

Denise McConnell got tired of the lawn that surrounded her Las Vegas home. The grass needed watering almost every day, mowing every week and a seasonal schedule of fertilizer and weed-control applications. To top it all off, it looked dull. “It was pretty nondescript,” the 62-year-old accountant says. “And my water bill was averaging about $100 a month.”
Giving Up On Grass

Homeowners are trading in putting-green turf and clipped hedges for landscaping that is much closer to what might have been there in the first place.

Inspired by the gardens she saw on a trip to Italy’s Tuscan countryside, Ms. McConnell worked hard and gradually transformed her yard into an oasis of heat-tolerant and water-efficient plants. Today, she is surrounded by beds of flowering perennials, herbs and fragrant vines. Her garden offers maximum privacy, and her monthly water bill? Cut in half, to about $50.

Garden-design strategies that encourage minimal watering, called “xeriscaping”—based on the Greek word for ‘dry’—first emerged in the West, where water resources are thin. Employees of Denver’s water department are widely believed to have coined the term in the early 1980s—and now it is spreading in other regions among conservation-minded homeowners who want to grow beautiful gardens. Read more “Gardening with out a sprinkler and be sure to check out the slide show with the article

From the unintended consequences dept. . .

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.
Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people. Read more Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’

More information:
Furious squirrels attack stray dog
The pack of mutant black squirrels that are giving Britain’s grey population a taste of their own medicine