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Organic gardening is becoming very popular and one Yellow Springs resident has inspired the community with her beautiful natural garden.
Sheryl Schooley is originally from a coastal town in Georgia and has always loved nature. “I was a boat captain and love being outdoors and doing environmental work,” she said. “I attended a luncheon for a grass roots group devoted to educating people about the importance of not using spray and growing organically.”
After that, Schooley was hooked on the idea of creating outdoor organic spaces that would attract pollinators. “I told myself if I ever had a section of land, I would give it a try,” she said.
A little more than three years ago, Schooley found herself in Yellow Springs, after her son was stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. She visited frequently to help care for her grandchildren and found she liked the little town, located about 20 miles east of Dayton.
“I got an acre of land and decided to build a house on it,” Schooley said. “It was a barren mud pit but I wanted to try to create a native landscape.”
But Schooley needed help with creating an organic garden filled with plants native to southeast Ohio so she asked a friend for advice and Nadia Malarkey’s name came up.
Malarkey, a native landscape designer and Yellow Springs resident since 1984, was born in the United Kingdom and has lived in many places around the world. “I moved to Ohio when my husband came to work at Antioch College and we never left,” Malarkey said. “I create three dimensional outdoor spaces that are very individualized based on what my clients envision..”
Schooley called Malarkey and asked for her help in designing her Yellow Springs garden.
“I told her (Malarkey) what my dream was and it just evolved from there,” Schooley said. “She did a soil test and it showed it couldn’t sustain anything as it was.”
Schooley’s home was built on an abandoned corn field and because of the condition of the soil, Malarkey had local organic farms truck in soil as a first step. She drew a landscape plan that featured all native plants that would thrive in Schooley’s yard.
The plan included nine types of trees, nine shrubs and seven types of native grasses. It also featured 25 different types of perennials, all designed to work together in the 1/3 acre yard linked together by gravel paths.
“It’s designed with various species and cultivators,” Malarkey said. “It’s sequenced for blooms for pollinators (such as bees and butterflies) from early spring to early fall. Then the seed heads are left for the birds through the winter.”
Malarkey said she enjoyed creating a space from the ground up and with this garden wanted to show people how to increase native habitats within residential areas. “The design is based on strong principals that create places of beauty for people and for native species. You don’t have to have two acres of lawn. I’m really turning a paradigm on its head.”
Schooley’s yard does include a small patch of “token” lawn, created specifically for her grandchildren to play on and enjoy picnic lunches. “There is a 16 foot circle of lawn within this landscape of interconnected paths and native grasses,” Malarkey said. “I designed this garden with plants that compliment one another.”
This means that Schooley can enjoy color most of the year, from the orange of Witch Hazel to the blue of Blue Bells and Geraniums to different shades of purple in Salvias, it’s a wave of color that continues to transition throughout the year. Malarkey said that even in the winter, with the grasses still standing, the garden is beautiful.
“It’s always good to go around a garden in the winter so you can point out things to people the things they may not otherwise notice,” Malarkey said. “A garden is interesting all through the seasons.”
Malarkey entered the Yellow Springs garden in the 2015 Annual Awards of the Society of Garden Designers of the United Kingdom (since this was her birthplace) and titled it “Regenerating Suburbia. “It was chosen as one of four finalists in the planting design award category,” she said. “It was a huge honor and recognition to be chosen.”
Schooley’s environmentally friendly garden is now nearly three years old and no pesticides have ever been used. In addition, Malarkey manages a crew that cares for the garden without power tools of any kind. She also put in a cistern to collect rainwater to help sustain the plants.
“It’s a gorgeous yard and my neighbors and other villagers are now interested in doing their yards like this,” Schooley said. “We are educating people about not using pesticides and how to grow organically. It can be really beautiful.”
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