Feed your Body. Feed your Soul. Get outside and Garden!

Greetings!

What a difference a week makes! Who could every have imagined the world we areliving in right now, but, this is our new reality. At Natureworks, we have beenworking SO hard to get ready to open on Thursday, March 19th, the first day ofspring. We have also been working on ways to make our plants, seeds, and organicsupplies available to everyone. As long as we are allowed to stay open, we will beopen BUT we have many new measures in place to make purchasing from us safe.Here is the statement that I have prepared, with the invaluable help of my staff:

Say Hi! to our newest Hellebore- 'Glenda's Gloss'We will be posting photos of all the plants in stock on Instagram and

Facebook and will add to it daily as selection changes.Call to order, give us a credit card number and pull in for curbside

pickup or to schedule a delivery. Easy peasy!

Natureworks is opening this week on Thursday, March 19th,the first day of spring.

We realize how desperately all of us want to garden right now, especially with the very earlyspring and the fact that we have to stay home. After MUCH consideration, we have decided toopen as usual, but enact some new measures to keep everyone safe.

*The well-being and safety of our customers and our staff is our top priority.*

We are very aware of the need for social distancing, regular hand washing, and sanitizing of allsurfaces. Here is what we are doing:

We are asking all of our staff AND our customers to not come to Natureworks if they or anyone intheir family are feeling ill in any way. This is so important.

Any employees of Natureworks that can possibly work remotely from home will be doing so. Thatincludes office and design staff.

All of our Natureworks staff will be using CDC recommended hand washing procedures.

We will be keeping our cash register counter and all equipment sanitized.

We will be regularly cleaning all doorknobs, wagon handles, and anything else that may betouched.

We will be cleaning everything, all the time. We are serious about this.

Even though we love to hug and shake hands with our customers, we will be doing a "Namaste"bow instead. We ask that everyone be aware of therecommended 3-6 foot "social spacing". Waving andmaking silly faces at us is allowed!

We hope that all of our customers can use credit cardsinstead of cash so we can all avoid handling money.

We offer many ways to bring some spring into yourhome without coming into our shop:

You can call ahead and place an order foranything we have in stock, pay for it over the

phone with a credit card, drive into the parkinglot, and call us to tell us you are here. We willthen load your car for you and give you a smileand a wave as you go home and garden.You can call and place an order for anything wehave in stock, pay for it over the phone with acredit card, and arrange to have it delivered.There is no minimum purchase required fordelivery and a fee charged for this service (aswe have to pay our staff to do it!) We expect tomake deliveries of bagged materials such asfertilizer, compost, and mulch on the weekendsas our crew vans and trucks are available. If youare interested in having your organic gardeningsupplies delivered, we are ready to take yourorder!If you do not wish to come inside our store, youcan shop outside and we can ring you upoutside. Because of its small size, we will notallow our shop to get crowded. Please beunderstanding if we ask you to wait outside. Weencourage you to shop our benches and when you are ready, we will come out and ringyou up.If you need seed starting supplies, seeds, or other items that we display inside our shop,we can bring them out to your wagon for you. On nice days, when it isn't windy, we willdisplay as much as is practical outside.We want to be your "personal shoppers". We can help you select seeds, organicfertilizers, organic pest control products, even our favorite gardening books. Tell us whatyou want and we will gather it together for you from inside the shop and bring it out to yourwagon for you!

Yes, we most certainly can do Curbside Pickup! Call and place yourorders, let us help you select just what you need and then we will

load it in your car, smile, and wave goodbye!We are blessed with a very early spring. That is a gift. We know how much it means to all of ourcustomers to be able to go outside and garden, especially now. Take advantage of all of the joy,relaxation, and stress relief that gardening offers us. If there is anything we can do to help you,please reach out to us.

'Penny's Pink' Hellebore- just look atthat foliage!

Yes, when you drive up, there WILL be pansies and we will be happyto load them into your car for you. Just point and in they go. We can

take a credit card and "ring you up" right in the parking lot.Okay, with that being said, let's talk gardening! Yay! We have been getting in allkinds of plants this week including some simply stunning new Hellebores, pansies,

and the first of our native ground covers suchas Packera aurea (golden groundsel). Ofcourse, as a small business owner with 30employees, it is a bit scary to invest in newinventory. But, we hope that curbside pickup,our delivery service, and our personalshopping service will allow everyone togarden while they are forced to stay home.And why not? Going outside, soaking upsunshine, breathing the fresh air, and caringfor the earth are very healing. Every day newwonders await- bulbs are popping up,perennial herbs like oregano and thyme arecoming to life, even the forsythia is starting tocrack in my shrub border. I am adding youngdandelion greens to everything I cook as theyare so good for you. My sunset view isglowing with the red flowers of the swampmaple trees in the distance and the STILL-blooming witch hazel trees in my yard. My

home is perfumed with the branches of Lonicera fragrantissima and Abeliophyllumthat I picked IN FLOWER this week. If I was disciplined enough to turn off mythoughts while outside working in the yard, I would be a serenely happy person. I tryeach day to do that, even for a little while. I see my neighbors out walking. I hear thekids all around me outside playing. We all wave to each other and talk over thefence.

Don't forget to feed your gardenwith our Magic Formula!

This is the first St. Patrick's Day in decades when you can actuallyplant your peas. Do you have a soil thermometer to check the

temperature of your soil? We have plenty in stock. Add one to yourorder for curbside pickup.

We have everything you need to wake up and feed the garden, including our *MagicFormula*. Click Here to read our handout on Feeding the Garden that explains allabout it. With this very early spring, you should be cutting back the old leaves ofyour Epimediums and Hellebores as soon as youcan so you don't have to "tiptoe" around the new,tender growth. Every day I prune some summerblooming shrubs. So far I have worked on mybuttonbush (Cephalanthus), rose of Sharon,Callicarpa, and Potentilla. Still to come are mysummer blooming spireas, the rest of my butterflybushes (which never lost their leaves this winter),and a lot more. I am cutting back any of last year'sperennial stems that I left up for the tunnel nestingbees to 15" - leaving that much up assures that thelate emerging bees will still be okay. The newgrowth will grow up and cover it within weeks. Ihave also been moving plants around- roses,raspberry canes, divisions of 'Raydon's Favorite'asters, even some self-sown plants that I wassmart enough to mark in the fall.

With this very early spring weather, I have alreadyplanted radish seeds because my soil thermometer read 50 degrees everywhere Itried it, even in the shade. Radishes and lettuce can go in at 40 degrees, so we areoff to the races, my friends. Never has their been a year when it is moreimportant to grow as much of your own organic food as possible. I amwriting this on St. Patrick's Day and it is the first one in decades where I can actuallyplant my pea seeds! We have a very handy chart called Vegetable Crop Timing onour website. Click Here to read it. In fact, if you are home, mine our website for allkinds of organic growing information. There is so much there for you to learn.

It's March and our mason bees are starting toemerge. Have you put up your tunnel nestingbee houses yet? Do you have clean tubes for

this year? It's time!

Speaking of learning, we did cancel our sold out Lawn Elimination all-day workshoplast weekend. We are right now working on offering the Pruning and Designing withNative Plants workshops on March 28th as paid webinars. We hope to eventuallymake the Lawn Elimination Day of workshops webinars too. Stay tuned, this is trulyan exciting development that we have been wanting to do for a LONG time and thissituation has forced us to DO IT! And we will be firing back up our weeklyYouTube/Facebook videos starting this Thursday. There is SO much to talk aboutas spring begins.

I am transitioning my bird feedingto the all-natural suet and mealworms that we sell here at thestore. Boy, do the birds love it!They need protein NOW as theycan only raise their young oninsects, not seeds. Watching thebirds continues to be one of myhusband and my favorite pastimes.He has learned all their names thiswinter!

We have another very excitingannouncement to make: we areoffering a selection of ECO 59native plant plugs for prebooking.What does this mean? Click Hereto find out. It is a wonderful way togrow CT sourced, native plants ata great price. Be sure to read allthe fine print, the program has a

deadline and a few rules to follow. We hope this is the wave of the future in terms ofrestoring our yards to locally sourced and grown native plants.

If you need ANY organic seed starting supplies or seeds, just calland we will help you build and order. We can take a credit card overthe phone. Then you can let us know when you are in the parking

lot and we will come out and load you up. So, with our new reality for a while, I urge you to let nature calm you, relax you,entertain, and delight you. Perhaps we can meditate on all the connections that wehave to each other that we were so used to taking for granted and also realize that,in nature, everything is also connected. We are all in this together and together, wewill get through this crazy spring and have an even MORE beautiful, well-tendedgarden as a result.

Stay safe, stay calm, and garden as much as you possibly can. Stop by for"curbside pickup" of whatever you need. Call first to place an order. Hook up withone of my amazing staff members and let them be your personal shopper. If needbe, we can deliver our beautiful plants and organic supplies to your door. Or you cancome, shop outside, and we will check you out in the fresh air, give you a Namastebow and wave you on your way with a smile on our face.

Helleborus 'Anna's Red'

I Will Never Grow Carrots Any Other Way Again!

Look closely! Can you see my carrot seedlings sprouting?!?

Last summer I decided to experiment and plant all of my fall carrot crop in SmartPots. It was SO easy to do. I had just pulled a summer crop and the bags wereempty. I added some Quoddy Coast of Maine compost and some Pro Gro organicfertilizer, then I ever-so-carefully sowed the tiny carrot seeds as thinly as humanlypossible. Thinning was easy, any that needed it just slipped out of the loose soil.

This was my fall crop a few years ago, when I was growing my beetsand carrots in my raised beds. The soil still has rocks in it and isheavy clay. I continue to add Coir and compost every year.

I was THRILLED with the results, and so was my husband who LOVES carrotsalmost as much as he loves cucumbers andradishes. There were straight, long, gigantic, sweet,pretty much perfect. Three big Smart Pots full. Iwish I had planted SIX!

So this spring, because I rotate my plant families, Iam bringing home THREE MORE Smart Pots andthe Coast of Maine Castine Blend raised bed soil tofill them. Carrot seeds can be planted now. That isexactly what I am going to do as soon as I get amoment. I have the spot for these new Smart Potsall picked out, smack in the middle of the newraised beds I had built last year in the sunniest spotin my yard.

What am I going to plant in the Smart Pots on thesouth side of my house that had the carrots lastyear? Beets! Broccoli raab! More radishes. Let the planting party begin.

Preparing your Garden Shed for Spring

If you are at all like me, you are outside every day that you can be (which might be aLOT more often than you were expecting this month...), looking for things to do inyour yard. One of the best things you can do is prepare your garden shed for spring.

Sharpen your tools! Truly, dullpruning shears make you feel likea weakling! You will be amazed athow much easier pruning is whenyou have sharpened and oiledpruning shears. We love the littleblue sharpener shown above. Allof the crews have them in theirtrucks and we keep one hangingon a hook in the kitchen of theshop. We all know how important itis to sharpen all the time. And forgoodness sake, toss those cheap,twisted, anvil-blade sheers andinvest in a good pair for yourself. Dig out your garden sickle. You

are going to need it to chop all the stems thatyou left up over the winter down to 15" for thetunnel nesting bees that will be flying a bit later.And those ornamental grasses- a garden sickleis the ONLY way to deal with them too. I use mycut grasses as a coarse mulch between myraspberry rows and in the wilder areas of my"back forty". I have a friend that just painted allher tool handles bright red so she won't losethem. I wrap all of mine with purple duct tape.But I have a holster for my Felco pruners and aholster for my garden sickle. I would not ventureout into the garden without my tool belt on.

Sickle, holster, and don't forget theHori Hori knife!

Grub Gone is a cutting edge,safe product. Stock up today.We will load it in your car foryou so you have it when you

want to apply it.

Stock up on your supplies. You can call in anorder and we will pick it out for you, charge yourcredit card, and you can drive up and we willload you up. Grab some Grub Gone becausevery soon, the beetle grubs will be movingupwards in the soil and you do NOT want toeven consider using any toxic poisons on youryard. This breakthrough product works so welland is easy to apply. We are well stocked.

Grass seed- our custom blend- is in stock and ready for pickup!

Order some of our custom grass seed mix and some Coast of Maine topsoil andcompost for topdressing any bare spots. Consider seeding in some clover to bringmore nitrogen into your soil and help the pollinators. I usually bring home a 50# bag of Pro Gro to startthe season and dump it into a large, covered plasticbucket. I also have a bucket with Pro Holly at theready. Both are empty right now, so I know what Ineed to toss in the back of my car tonight. I alwayshave bags, both Quoddy and Penobscot compost,in my driveway. And I always have a bag of cocofiber (coir) to continue to lighten my soil.

We do ourpurchasing forthe spring in thefall of theprevious year.Back then, whocould have ever imagined what was in store forus as we opened on the first day of spring? But,nevertheless, we PERSIST. Spring will happenno matter what. We will do everything in ourpower to help you have the best organic garden

you have ever had. The universe seems to beconspiring to give you plenty of time to work on it.We will all grow a LOT this year, that's for sure.

Join the Natureworks Team

Natureworks is hiring, please read the details on our web page by Clicking Here.

Natureworks Gardening Class Offerings

It is very likely that we will not be able to offer these classesin person. We are working on offering both of them, and

many more, as paid WEBINARS. Stay tuned...

Click image above to register for the morning Learn to Prune with Nancy-BasicPrinciples and Practices class.

Click image above to register for the afternoon The Basics of Designing a NativePlant Garden for Succession of Bloom class.

If you wish to download/print the 4-page 2020 Natureworks Gardening ClassBrochure, please CLICK HERE. The registration form is on page 4.

RETAIL SHOP HOURS beginning March 19, 2020

Monday - Saturday 8:30 am - 6:00 pm

Sunday 9:00 am - 5:00 pmWe are closed for the season and will be reopening on

Thursday, March 19, 2020 the first day of spring.

Click a Quick Link for more Information

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Natureworks Horticultural Services (map)518 Forest Road, Northford, CT 06472

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