Habitat Hero – June 2020

Catherine Salem

When I received a nomination for this quarter’s Habitat Hero, I was excited to get to visit this property.  It is one I have admired from the front but have never seen the back or been up, close, and personal with the plants.  I was not disappointed.  The 2^nd quarter winner of the Cape Conservation Corps Habitat Hero is Catherine Salam.  Catherine is a long time CSC Garden Club member, Master Gardener, Master Composter, Bay-Wide certified and self-taught gardener.  Like many of us, she uses trial and error, learning along the way, letting the plants self-design as they settle into their happy place.

We started the tour of her property out front at her pond, a beautiful oasis that provides so much for habitat I was hooked already!  Water for the birds, dragonflies, damselflies and frogs, plants for cover and resting spots and food sources.  The garden across the front of the property is full of plants that provide nectar, host spots, shelter and beauty.  Something is bloom in every season.  There are asters, amsonia, phlox, goldenrods, and milkweed and several annuals for a splash of color. Even some veggies tucked in to some open sunny spots, according to the principles of ‘foodscaping’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodscaping.

Catherine is working on removing the invasive plants that can choke the native plants and prevent a fully functioning ecosystem, including English ivy, a Russian olive tree, Japanese spirea and kerria, and bamboo.  She has stripped her lawn to only walking paths to take you from one area to the next.  The front path is lined with a small row of boxwoods on one side and the low stone wall on the other, her “Nike swoosh”.  It draws you in to the space and piques your interest to what is around the corner.  As we made our way down the grassy path we passed an inviting sitting area- a wrought iron bench with a canopy of Carolina jessamine (or jasmine) climbing up to make a shaded resting place. The side yard that was lined with a variety a native shrubs, and trees including dogwoods, witch hazel, redbuds, American holly, sassafras, black cherry.  So many produce berries to nourish the backyard birds that she only needs to put seed out in the winter. There are elderberry, blueberry, blackberry, viburnums including “Blue Muffin” and a maple.  Beautiful shade loving oak leaf hydrangea providing nesting areas, spicebush to host the spicebush caterpillar.  The beds under the canopy contained shade loving perennials including tiarella, heuchera, wild ginger, ferns, trillium, iris crestata and carex.

The pathways continued in the backyard as we circled around the beds, noticing blue jays, catbirds and robins.  The backyard gardens contained even more varieties of native plants: joe-pye weed, Helenium species, bee balm, more milkweed, asters and golden ragwort. Catherine also has several raised garden beds in the back with a selection of herbs, veggies and annuals. 

The beautifully landscaped garden with a mix of natives and non-natives coming together to form a mini-oasis is just part of what makes Catherine an ideal Habitat Hero winner.  Her ecofriendly maintenance makes up the other 1/2. She is using IPM (letting the good bugs take care of pest management instead of pesticides and insecticides,) collects rain water from her property in four rain barrels she has installed on her downspouts to capture and direct the water.  In the fall she leaves her stems from the spent flowers as nesting and overwintering spots for insects, strategically placed brush piles add to the habitat in her yard, uses leaves as natural mulch and compost from four bins as a safe way to add nourishment to her soil. In addition to the winter feeding stations for the birds she has installed a mason bee house for those important solitary pollinators!

Catherine has stated her goal is to “have an integrated, ecological, beautiful, four season interest setting to enjoy” and I would say she achieved that.  There are places to sit, reflect, find a sense of peace and calm from the outside world while providing a safe place for everything from pollinators, amphibians, birds, and mammals to seek shelter, food, water and nesting spots.  From her sense of design to creating suites or little rooms, the contrasting foliage from deep purple to bright chartreuse to the dainty fronds, lacy caps and broad deciduous leaves to everything in between creates a sense of place where humans and fauna can find respite from the craziness of the world.

Finally, Catherine is instilling the value of nature, the need to be a good steward of the Mother Earth in the next generation by involving her grandkids in the planting, growing and eating from the garden to show respect for the natural world, allowing them to discover how “cool” bugs are, teaching them to love, respect and nurture our natural world.  Thank you Catherine for being an amazing example of what a good steward of the land is and being a Habitat Hero!