Local Organic Garden, Information Center Opening On Earth Day, April 22

By John Voket

Despite the fact that Newtown landscape designer and engineer Dan Holmes is a certified organic practitioner, it was always challenging for him to promote the many ways he could improve someone’s yard or business “the natural way.” Virtually no retail suppliers in the region carried organic supplies.

“People are conditioned to lay down chemical fertilizer, or to use fast and easy store-bought products, even though they are almost always damaging the environmental foundation of their property, and those applications are certainly potentially harmful to them, their kids, and their pets,” Mr Holmes said while preparing his new Mt Pleasant Road garden center for its grand opening Saturday.

The local land professional is making a statement about the way he would like to see his Newtown neighbors developing and caring for their properties by opening his new business Saturday, April 22 — Earth Day. Holmes Fine Gardens Center is at 144 Mt Pleasant Road (Route 6), just west of the intersection of Hawleyville Road (Route 25).

While the garden center at first glance may appear to offer many of the same types of plants and products as any other, Mr Holmes is specifically targeting clientele and fellow landscape professionals with an eye on offering the safest and most environmentally friendly means of sprucing up their properties.

“We want to first and foremost, serve as a resource for the community — a place for people to come to if they really care about the land, and their land,” he said. “There’s more to having a good looking property than an unblemished carpet of green grass. I don’t think people would slap an expensive paint job on damaged or rotten wood, but they just don’t know how synthetic chemicals are compromising the basic building blocks in their soil.”

Promising to provide good advice and healthy products, Mr Holmes’ said his garden center will probably feature many items from manufacturers very few have ever heard of.

“We want people to be aware of what the organic alternatives are, but most commercial garden centers won’t touch it,” he said. “But I refuse to carry synthetic chemicals; there just not safe for my customers, and they’re not good for the earth.”

Mr Holmes is a certified Organic Land Care Professional, having completed an intensive training program offered annually by the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA). He also holds a BA in horticultural and landscape design from CalPoly State University in California.

The local landscape professional has served as a resource on radio public service programs promoting organic practices and training, and he recently completed a pilot segment for a home gardening show that is being pitched to The Discovery Channel.

“My hope is to take organic gardening and landscaping to a new level starting with our neighbors and businesses right here in Newtown,” he said. “Our community can set an example for the entire state if we just say no to destroying our soil, and threatening our kids and pets with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.”

Mr Holmes believes he is among fellow organic devotees leading a new wave of gardening and landscaping practices that will become more commonplace in the near future, not because homeowners and businesses volunteer, but because new laws are slowly forcing a change away from chemical applications.

“There are already entire provinces in Canada where synthetic lawn care products are banned,” he said. “And Connecticut is already on the way to restricting chemical fertilizers and pesticides near schools, parks, and day care operations. That’s got to be sending a message to homeowners that organic is the way to go.”

While converting to an organic property may take two, possibly three annual cycles, and integrating the practices requires a “little more knowledge and patience, it’s definitely not more work,” Mr Holmes insisted. He explained that synthetic, store-bought multistep treatments may create that carpet of green lawn, but every season those chemicals are applied make the roots of everything it touches less viable.

“Chemical fertilizers feed the plant from the ground up, but they don’t enhance the micro-organisms in the soil,” he said. “Organic applications feed these organisms that, in turn, fortify the plants from the very tips of their roots through the healthy soil they are in.”

He pointed to native forestlands that have existed on decomposed plant and animal life, in many cases, for centuries having never been touched by synthetic, manufactured products. And when it comes to insects and pests, the organic way may not be the fastest, but it is the safest.

“Look, you can have a fantastic organically fed lawn, it just takes a couple of years to convert. Organic applications aren’t going to provide an instant kill for bugs and grubs. But you know what, putting down insecticides, nerve poisons are bad for the bugs and grubs; they have to be bad for us and our pets,” he said. “For a year or two, I’ll take the bugs and grubs.”

Besides offering organic advice and lawn care products, the Holmes Fine Gardens Center has hundreds of native and ornamental plants, shrubs, trees, and other products to beautify and protect homes and property. Inside the small boutique, Mr Holmes offers books on organic methods, planters, organically grown lavender, gifts, and knick-knacks.

There are also rare orchids, organic herbs when available, stag horn ferns, air plants, and deer repellant sharing the space with tools and flats full of flowers ready for planting.

The grand opening events from 9:30 am to 3 pm will include refreshments, live entertainment, face painting, a free window box craft activity for children, raffles of products including a tree, and Holmes’ staff landscape architect offering free advice. Instead of a ribbon-cutting, local officials are invited to participate in a grand opening Earth Day tree planting ceremony.

Anyone with the means to carry it can also stock up on mulch or wood chips, courtesy of Mr Holmes’ landlord and neighboring business partners Charlie Payne and Percy Ferris, and their Connecticut Wood Recycling and Mulch enterprise.

Mr Holmes is interested in meeting local amateur and professional artisans as well, to begin offering referrals to his residential and business clients who may be seeking unique pieces of garden or yard art.

“We’re here for a quick tip, or to provide full-scale consultation on any scope of landscape design or organic conversions,” Mr Holmes said. “The idea is to start right here in Newtown, showing America that we can turn our landscaping practices around. I’m all for green lawns, but we’ve got to get our priorities straight and get back to protecting the soil we live on and the watershed that gives our families and our wildlife the most basic element of nourishment.”

Holmes Fine Gardens Center is open Sunday–Wednesday from 8 am to 5 pm, Thursday–Saturday 8 am to 6 pm; 270-3331. The website for the business www.holmesfinegardens.com is being cultivated now and will be online soon.