Reducing water consumption is important to many of us, especially for those in dryer climates. A fantastic resource for you guys in the deserts is High Country Gardens. From Santa Fe they offer a nice selection of native plants that require less care and attention than the tropical imports and the highly hybridized annuals that are pushed at garden centers every year.

If you have an interest in any of the following you should sign up to receive the Xeriscape Gardening Newsletter.

• Xeriscape Perennials
• Hardy Garden Perennials
• Groundcovers
• Ornamental Grasses
• Shrubs & Conifers
• Native Plants
• Cacti and Succulents

The past few weeks I’ve seen beautifully illustrated emails on the topics of using ornamental grasses, gardening with color, perennials, dahlias, thymes and salvias, and even one about Blue Orchard Mason Bee Nest Tubes for Spring.

The online catalog is handsome. Clean lines, not too cluttered, yet full of information. Tool tips pop up with item specifics when you hover your mouse pointer over the large-enough thumbnail pictures. Each item details page gives plenty of details on the particular plant and its growing requirements.

Herbs are not too plentiful in the High Country Gardens Catalog. Only 6 herbal items, and they’re potted plants:

Artemisia abrotanum ‘Tangerine’
Hyssopus officinalis
Lavandula x intermedia ‘Provence’
Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Irene’™
Salvia officinalis ‘Minima’
Thymus sp.

Like I said though, if you’re interested in gardening with a green intent, then subscribe to the newsletter. It will give you ideas on how to use native plants in your gardens, especially perennials, ground covers and grasses.

As was expected… both my physical and virtual mail boxes are now full. That was predictable. What I wasn’t ready for were the beautiful pictures and wealth of information in these catalogs. It’s all out there. I’ll be pointing you the way to the best resources, but for now a quick tip.

For a fast discount I recommend registering with the gardening websites that are of interest to you. Why?

• By law, their newsletters or weekly emails have to stop coming when you unsubscribe, so there’s no trouble with giving them your email address. If you no longer want to receive it, just unsubscribe.
• Any of the digital versions that you choose is a wiser, more environmentally-friendly or eco-friendly choice than the paper versions of catalogs.
• Many of the seed companies have internet only or online discounts, so take advantage of them.

Sign up for newsletters if you can and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with discount offers. Good luck! I hope you find some real gems.

Composting is a major part of reusing materials. Yes, our mantra reduce, reuse, recycle can be put to work in our gardens. Avoiding the purchase of fertilizers and insecticides is a side benefit of making the best compost. Read on to learn more in this great resource, World’s Best Compost.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll discover in Worlds Best Compost:

• The method of feeding plants in a totally natural way that results in the most tastiest, divine food you and your family will ever have.
• Why do you use much less water in your garden now using colloidal humus compost? (and how you will be saving money and effort and the environment)
• What’s the sheep mentality that almost all agriculture and garden advisors suffer from that costs you time and money on dangerous, toxic gardening and horticulture practices. (and is killing our planet in the process)?
• How to achieve a soil that “feeds itself” so you always get consistent results!

Read more about composting!

Some of the varieties that may be available include: American Arborvitae, Eastern White Pine, Black Walnut, Red Maple, White Oak, American Cranberry and Serviceberry. Birdhouse kits and Wildflower mixes are also available by some districts.

You might want to act fast though, a few conservation districts in our region are no longer accepting orders. Clinton County will take orders until April 1, Union County until April 7, and Synder County until March 31, 2008, to name a few that are still accepting orders.

The seedlings are inexpensive and the monies go toward supporting the Conservation Districts. Do something a little green today. Purchase a few seedlings and support an organization that helps to educate our children about conservation of our natural heritage.

To make it a little easier to find the information about the offerings of the different gardening catalog companies, I’m creating a database. In the future all I’ll have to do is refer to information that I’ve already gathered to recall where I purchased a particular seed or plant. The seed catalog database will have information about the companies and the products they offer, as well as reviews of the online and print catalogs.

In the spirit of helping others I’ll make the database available to anyone stopping by usethatherb.com – I’ll even let you download a pdf file of the database contents whenever it’s ready, that is.

So far I’ve requested a couple dozen print catalogs to be sent to me via snail mail. I know some of these will take 3-4 weeks to get to me due to the printing/mailing process, but I can wait. Here in central Pennsylvania the planting season doesn’t start for a few weeks yet.

Why would anyone who is green-minded, like myself, order anything in print that is available in a digital format? Even though I’m acting like a consumer by requesting that something be physically created and shipped to me, what I do with those items can help to offset the costs I’ve put on society, indeed consumer-driven society. If I can find a way to adhere to the three laws of recycling, reduce-reuse-recycle, I know I’ll feel better.

First, many of the seed and gardening catalogs stem from a long history of providing information to prospective gardeners. The shift to using the Internet for providing that information is happening, but at a slow rate. More companies have more catalog offerings on their websites now than at any other time, so that’s a good thing. A few have done away with print catalogs entirely – Bravo! The savings in printing and postage costs should help those companies survive and do well. Reducing costs and paper waste adheres to the first law of recycling, reduce.

Next year, I won’t be ordering those catalogs again because of the information I’m picking up now. Avoiding consumption should be emphasized more often, but we do live in a consumer-driven society and change is difficult. We can still try though!

Second, gardening catalogs are easily passed from one person to another and many of the ones I expect to receive will be shared in this way. Reuse is the second law of recycling.

Third, any catalogs that don’t pass muster will promptly be fed to the worms. Composting paper with food wastes is easy to do and will let us recycle those old catalogs that are no longer needed. Obeying the third law of recycling just makes ya feel good! Recycle.

Don’t have a worm bin or a place to compost your old papers? We’ll have to investigate what other options you might have for recycling your old catalogs in a future post.

Can anyone offer what they do to reduce-reuse-recycle with respect to all the catalogs they get in the mail? Leave a comment!