Karin Ursula Landscapes

Beautiful garden and landscape design in the Hudson Valley

What’s New

Plants Speak!

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In 2020 I posted to Facebook about the heartbreak I felt walking onto jobsites witnessing trees cut down to make room for new houses, driveways, firepits, terraces.  The great sadness at seeing tree bodies piled at sides of newly constructed roads with just-severed tree roots still jutting out from soil embankments. At that point, I knew I could not continue to ignore my heartbreak but didn’t know how I would shift away from traditional landscape design into a softer, gentler way of working with people and plants.

Its taken me several years and I am still finding the path forward but am happy to invite you to the first annual Plants Speak Gathering at the Uplands Center in Walton, NY on Saturday September 21st. For the past year I’ve been collaborating with a group of plant-centered humans including my herbal teacher Marguerite Uhlmann-Bower and my Plant Sister Miki Aso to create this event to bring ways of feeling and sending into plant knowledge to all people. Everyone from every walk of life and job is welcome, not just gardeners, horticulturists, herbalists, nursery people, artists others who work with plants. Though they are welcome too.

Third Thursdays Environmental Series

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A sense of wonder is the enemy of the imperial mind. –  Martin Prechtel

Nature is respite, Nature heals, Nature is welcoming of all Beings, so why then as gardeners do we still blindly follow old dictates and garden rules? Why garden in rigid black and white? Allow yourself the all-inclusive joy of a wild, expressive garden that is beautiful, biodiverse and healing.

Lead with your heart! Observe! Be curious! Cultivate a sense of wonder when meeting and working with all Beings who live on the Land. Do not be afraid of your garden or the plants in it; even those plants who humans label invasive offer us gifts of beauty and health.

Karin Ursula has an M.S. in Landscape Design from Columbia University, studied with Marguerite Uhlmann-Bower at Earth School in Delaware County, and works with plants in subtle and healing ways. As an ecological landscape designer for 15 years, Karin is known for cultivating biodiverse gardens in the Catskill Mountains alongside her beloved dogs Bella, Ollie, Arthur, and Suzie. Indigenous eco-philosophy authors such as Sherri Mitchell, Martin Prechtel, and Derrick Jensen continue to shape and form her relationship with plants, winged, four-footed and furry creatures and Mother Earth.

Please join me this Thursday August 15th at 630pm at the Third Thursdays Hudson Valley Environmental Series You Tube Channel. The Webinar is now up on the Third Thursdays You Tube Channel for viewing here.

KUL Native Plant Pollinator Garden in DWELL Magazine

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One of my favorite native plant gardens is featured this month in DWELL Magazine. In 2016 I designed and built this garden to be a soothing green on green, pollinator heaven using 98% native plant species that are deer resistant and major pollinator attractants.  The gardens were meant to enhance the extraordinary quality of the home – like a ship sailing through the forest. We used sedges as natural mulch and groundcover, bergamot bee balm, blunt-toothed mountain mint, prairie smoke, shrubby St. John’s Wort, sweetfern and fragrant sumac in a sea of native ornamental grasses: little bluestem, prairie dropseed, switchgrass and Indian grass. We also incorporated mosses, sedums, lowbush blueberry and ferns present on site to seamlessly merge the designed areas with the natural ecosystem.

As evidenced, native plant gardens are beautiful and life-sustaining.

Four years on, we still maintain this garden now mostly pulling out bee balm and mountain mint to transplant to other areas of the property. In July the bees are buzzing so loud, it is beautiful for my ears and my Soul to behold.

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All photos: Pippa Drummond, courtesy of DWELL Magazine

Dwell Magazine and KUL

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Years ago as a landscape design student, I used to read Dwell Magazine on the subway totally in awe of the contemporary architecture and landscapes.

Last summer 2019, one of my gardens was featured in Dwell’s Outdoor Living Issue. Published in the May/June issue, the article entitled Woodland Skills featured the property of architect Maria Ibanez and her husband Todd Rouhe. They hired me to design a spare, beautiful landscape to help heal the scars of construction and to blend the disturbed edges back into the surrounding woodland. To accomplish this I used almost entirely native plants – three types of sedges (Carex spp.), two species of ferns, three mountain mints (Pycnanthemum spp.) and a handful of native shrubs like bayberry (Myrica pennsylvanica), gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa), sweetfern (Comptonia peregrina), bush honeysuckle (Diervella lonicera) and American elderberry (Sambucus canadensis). Almost immediately, the bees arrived on the mountain mints. Some of the deer were curious about the elder and Maria and Todd had to net those. The following year the sedges were starting to spread; so were the ferns. Mission accomplished!

The Year Trees Came Alive

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Everyone’s talking trees. Peter Wohlleben (forester), Suzanne Simard (biologist), Richard Powers (author), Richard Attenborough (naturalist), Melvin Sheldrake (scientist). These people from varied professions are saying the same thing:  trees are intelligent and there exist vast interconnected networks of life both above and underground . Ever heard of the Wood Wide Web? Old growth or Mother Trees provide knowledge and nutrition to the younger saplings in the forest via underground mycorrhizal fungal networks that transfer water, carbon, nitrogen and other minerals. Just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It is. Everything is sentient and alive, merely in its own non-human way.

To help combat Climate Chaos, nations around the world are planting large quantities of trees: Canada, Ethiopia, India, Ireland, Norway, Russia, Uganda all have accomplished major tree plantings or have a tree planting plan in the works.

Old growth forests, Mother Trees and regenerating woodland tracts are the most important as they have the age and the wisdom to pass along to younger trees. If you are a land owner considering a timber harvest, visit Healing Harvest Forest Foundation first to find out ways that our human need for forest products can co-exist with the forest’s life needs now and for the future.

If you are inspired to plant more trees but are running out of space, visit Tree Sisters and make a donation. Your money will advance their mission of planting trees to protect and expand intact forest landscapes, restore and protect watersheds and restore topsoil and land fertility.

To date, Tree Sisters has planted 4 million trees across the globe.

At the very, very least, hug a tree or thank a tree for her amazing and wonderful life.

 

 

 

Here’s to a New Year and a New KUL

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Dear Friends and Supporters.

I have been designing, installing and maintaining gardens in the Catskills for eleven years now. It has been incredibly gratifying, and I have had a good run. After some serious thought and agonizing, I have decided to hang up my Redwing work boots and disengage from the installation and maintenance side of the business. I want to give my body a break while still continuing to help clients create beautiful gardens by focusing on thoughtful design, consultations and coaching. My efforts will continue to focus on sustainable, ecological and pollinator and wildlife friendly gardens with native plants at their heart and soul. Additionally, I will offer project management, nurturing a project from design through to the installation phase.

Thank you for eleven wonderful years. It has been both hard work and an absolute pleasure. I am looking forward to this next chapter.