Emily Plants provides garden coaching, plant identification, planting services, pruning, and the plants themselves. Plants can be integrated into an existing garden or you can replace part of your lawn with a raspberry patch or mini orchard.
Emily installs fruit trees, bushes, and vines, nut trees and bushes, edible perennials like asparagus, native plants, plants for pollinators, and also gives advice about planting edible landscapes and natives. Imagine a strawberry patch, a row of raspberries, a peach tree, a privacy hedge of native shrubs and/or a mini prairie right in your own backyard!
Emily plants 1- to 3-year-old bare root and potted trees and shrubs. She selects varieties that are suitable for Wisconsin’s climate and disease resistant to minimize the need for chemical sprays or other inputs. Ensuring that your soil is healthy will also contribute to the success of your new trees. Emily will inspect your soil before planting and amend it if changes need to be made to be optimal for the plants that you want to grow.
The best time to plant bare root trees is April and May, however they also can be planted in October or November. Potted trees can be planted anytime during the growing season.
Emily will consult with you and draw up a plan that best fits your needs, or work with an existing plan. She will plant, mulch, and water all plantings, and fence all trees and shrubs. She can text or email watering reminders during the first growing season and provide you with written post-planting care information. Emily can also prune or teach you how to prune and shape your trees and shrubs.
Plant Identification and Mapping
Do you need help identifying the plants in your yard? Maybe you already have edible plants and you just don’t know it! Emily will come to your site, identify what you have, and suggest what other plants will integrate well with your yard. She will also provide a map so you can remember where everything is.
Native Plants
Besides encouraging food production, Emily offers services for native plant establishment, which includes planting prairies, hedgerows or interspersed natives throughout your site. This creates critical habitat for beneficial insects, which contribute to the success of your orchard, improve your local ecosystem, and promote the health of the regional environment. Most native plants require little care once they are established.
Chestnuts
Remember the song, “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire?” Chestnuts are making a comeback, and they are one of the few nut trees that grow well in Wisconsin. They provide for a great harvest, and they only have to be planted once (unlike the vegetables in your garden that have to be planted each season). Chestnuts taste good, are one of the few low fat nuts, are high in fiber, and are a gluten-free source of carbohydrates. Emily is looking for yards that have space to grow three or more of these large, beautiful trees (up to 40 feet tall). For a limited time, Emily will plant chestnuts for only $25 each. Some varieties of chestnut are susceptible to blight, but Emily plants only blight-resistant varieties that are hardy in Wisconsin.
Unusual Fruits
If you want low maintenance edibles that are extremely disease and pest resistant, consider planting some of the more unusual fruits like American persimmon, maypop, hardy kiwi, honeyberry, goji berry, medlar, etc. It may be hard to find samples of these fruits to taste before you plant, but Emily can help!
