When you step through the front gate of the Derwood Demonstration Garden, you find yourself in the Conservation Garden. Conservation gardening helps to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed through the use of native plants. These plants are adapted to local soils and climate and thus require no pesticides or fertilizers and little or no water input, except when establishing new plants. Additionally, local wildlife, including birds, insects, and small mammals, has evolved with the native plants and often depends on them for food, reproduction and shelter. One of the goals of a naturalistic design is to provide something of interest in every season of the year. It might be the bright red berries of the winterberries in the dead of winter, followed by the lovely early-blooming trilliums and unfurling ferns, then bright summer flowers, and finally fall leaf colors and tall seed heads in autumn. A top dressing of compost and partially composted leaves each year improves the soil and helps keep weeds to a minimum. Though this garden is not exclusively a native plants garden, each year ongoing efforts are made to add more native plants and to remove inappropriate and/or invasive plants.
The Conservation and Wildlife Garden is the first garden once you enter the gate and is a fairly self-sustaining garden, requiring no pesticides or fertilizers. Conservation gardening helps to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed thru the use of native plants, which are adapted to local soils and climate and thus require minimal care. One of the goals of a naturalistic garden design is to provide something of interest in every season of the year. Learn more here(PDF)