This month we’re launching our Natural Yard Care Ambassador program! This program is an exciting opportunity for Kirkland residents who practice natural yard care to share those practices with their neighbors and the rest of the Kirkland community.

Our first cohort of Natural Yard Care Ambassadors are…. drumroll please…

• Bill and Aly Gardner-Shelby (Norkirk, Moss Bay watershed)
• Alexander Cowen (Bridle Trails, Moss Bay watershed)
• Amanda Uluhan (Finn Hill, Denny Creek watershed)
• Bethany Williamson (Kingsgate, Kingsgate Slope watershed)
• Phil and Chris Harvey (Juanita, Forbes Creek watershed)
• Shannon Radley (Juanita, Juanita Creek watershed)

These awesome gardeners were chosen to highlight the variety of ways people can practice natural yard care to create beautiful, functional, environmentally friendly landscapes that enhance Kirkland’s overall ecological health.

What comes next?

Over the next several months, you’ll see our natural yard care ambassadors (and their landscapes) featured on this blog, sharing their advice, their struggles, and their motivations for gardening in a water and wildlife friendly way. We hope that when you read their stories, you’ll be inspired to adopt some natural yard care practices yourself! We’ll also be diving deeper into some of the topics below, so you can learn more about what it means to “build healthy soil” and what it takes to build a healthy, natural lawn.

What kinds of practices are we trying to promote through this program?

The criteria to become a Natural Yard Ambassador are:

• Practice natural lawn care
  • Mulch mow, overseed, top dress with compost.
• Practice smart watering
  • Water infrequently but deeply, water at the right time, and keep an eye on your irrigation system if you use one!
• Build healthy soil
  • Healthy plants start with healthy soil! Building healthy soil is done by adding compost and mulch, and using organic fertilizers sparingly.
• Plant right for your site
  • Encourage healthy plants by knowing your yard conditions and choosing plants wisely to suit those conditions. Group plants with similar needs together.
• Think twice before using pesticides
  • Start with prevention and healthy plants! Be willing to accept a little damage and a few weeds, Avoid weed and feed and other combo products with pesticides, and use least-toxic products, applied correctly, if using pest controls.

Natural Yard Care Ambassadors don’t have to practice all of these criteria – for example, they don’t do natural lawn care if they don’t have a lawn – but they strive to do as many of these as possible on their site.

Want to get involved in this program in the future? Go ahead and fill out an application here. We’ll be in touch!

Learn More:

Want to learn more about natural yard care right now? Click on the ambassador criteria above to delve deeper into any one of those topics, or click on some of our favorite resources below to explore further:

City of Kirkland natural yard care program:

www.kirklandwa.gov/yardcare

Tilth Alliance Garden Hotline:

https://gardenhotline.org/

Learn the best way to care for your lawn naturally depending on your “lawn care style” – including your expectations for the final look, and the level of effort you’re willing to put in:

https://followthewater.info/whats-your-lawn-style/