The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill is listed as a toxin-free place on the Perfect Earth Project’s website, and the museum treats visitors and people driving by on Montauk Highway to a vista of a wildflower meadow that extends along the entire front of the property.“The drought last summer provided opportunity for over-seeding and reestablishing the meadow,” said the museum's deputy director, Chris Siefert.
“The reestablishment started by thinking about the meadow from the soil up,” he said. “An appropriate mix of seed was developed that would work given the soil mix, without the use of herbicides and pesticides. We knew it would be a challenge, because invasive plant material gets aggressive when droughts occur, so our landscape team had to be very diligent and physically seek out and remove invasives as they tried to take hold.
“It will be another growing season (or two) before we see the fullness of the meadow,” Mr. Siefert continued, “but I have to say, 2016 has been a very successful growing season so far. The extraordinary amount of flowers that filled the meadow earlier this summer was the result we had all hoped for.”
He continued: “The naturalness of the meadow is stunning, simply a reflection of the inherent beauty in all of nature. As an art museum, we constantly seek to extend our core values and beliefs, as reflected in our mission. For us that means modeling best practices and ‘turning outward’ —engaging our community in genuine and significant ways.”
The Parrish’s commitment to chemical-free landscaping has been well received by the community.
“We don’t have hard data in place, but just during the past month, visitors at the Parrish have posted and tagged the museum in around 300 Instagram photos,” Mr. Siefert said earlier this summer, when the meadow was in full bloom. “Over 70 of them feature the meadow—some of them getting up to 200 ‘likes.’ So it seems as though part of the Parrish’s appeal has to do with the beauty surrounding it.
“I recently overheard a visitor as she got out of her vehicle energetically comment to her compatriots on how wonderful the tall grasses looked,” he continued. “She obviously didn’t have the entire scope of ‘pesticide/herbicide free’ landscapes in her frame of reference; but she reacted so positively to our setting—which is a reflection of our commitment—that we take that as a win-win.”
For property owners and managers interested in going chemical-free, the Perfect Earth Project offers a plethora of information and resource links at perfectearthproject.org. Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County offers soil testing, which Perfect Earth’s founder, Edwina von Gal, recommends as a good place to start. Once soil conditions are known, plants can be chosen that both suit the location and will enrich the soil. Find them at www.ccesuffolk.org.
on Aug 28, 2016