Get Your Garden Going this Earth Month! 🌎🌸🐝

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Dear Readers,

My dad attended the University of California, Berkeley, from 1962 to 1969, as both an undergraduate and a law student. He was very involved in the Free Speech Movement as well as the anti-war movement, and spent a fair amount of time at protests and demonstrations. His own father had a theory as to why the campus was such a hotbed of student activism. “Berkley has nearly perfect picketing weather year-round,” my grandfather posited. “At UCLA it gets too hot. Harvard, too cold.” I recently learned something new about all these student protests: It turned out that they inspired the first Earth Day.

Few activities provide as much solace or satisfaction as gardening, even when life gets complicated.

(Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated. Courtesy Cinematic / Alamy Stock Photo)

The man who is now often called “the father of Earth Day,” former Wisconsin junior senator Gaylord Nelson, “wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution,” per EarthDay.org. The concept originated as a bipartisan effort to engage young Americans in climate activism. The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, and 20 million Americans joined protests and marches — 10% of the population!

Earth Day became a yearly event and expanded beyond the United States. At some point, the day became an entire month. While I normally object to holiday bloat (no, we do not need Easter Candy on February 15th! Or do we?), in the case of Earth Month, I don’t really mind. At least, I wouldn’t mind nearly so much if it hadn’t become yet another opportunity to hawk more stuff.

I have received a lot of emails recently encouraging me to “celebrate Mother Earth with eco-friendly deals” and share products with you. On the one hand, I get it. I literally write a newsletter about sustainable shopping. On the other, it’s what I do all year long. And clickbait is not our goal here at Bluedot Living. The idea of encouraging you to “stock up on sustainable steals” just feels icky to me. Buying stuff you don’t need is never going to be good for the Earth.

So, I’ve decided to devote this newsletter to a topic I can get behind, regardless of the holiday: gardening. The first month of spring is a beautiful time to plan and create your summer and fall garden. Living in California, I was able to do some kind of gardening all year-round. Living in Connecticut, I learned the hard truth of the old adage not to start planting before Mother’s Day.

Wherever you are, you’ll find items here that will help your garden thrive. After all, it’s Earth Month, and the perfect time to appreciate the world around us. Also in this newsletter: an inspiring recent Dispatch from Melbourne, Australia, and instructions for how to make seedballs, an excellent Earth Day project for all ages and stages.

Happy gardening and happy shopping!

– Elizabeth Weinstein, Marketplace Editor

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Items to Help Your Garden Grow

Best Place to Start

Created 25 years ago by a former off-grid homesteader, Eartheasy offers great products for the home and garden, including raised beds, planter boxes, indoor and outdoor composting and vermiculture supplies, and so much more. Much of it is made in America. Read our review.

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Best Water-Saving Convenience

These beautiful clay pots, or ollas (“oy-yuhs”), are passive watering systems that keep your plants hydrated and save you water and time. These attractive ollas are made using solar power by a family-run ceramics studio in Wisconsin called One Wintry Night. Please note that they are currently oversold, so orders will take at least 7–10 days to ship. Read our review.

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Best Way to Get Your Garden Going

Now is the time to set up bee hotels (or cabanas, chalets, or villas, if you will), small structures that provide homes for solitary bees. These bees, which do more pollinating and less stinging than honeybees, will really give your plants a boost. Read our review.

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Best for Sprouting and Seed-Starting

As many cold-weather gardeners know, you can get a big headstart on the season if you start indoors. True Leaf Market offers all kinds of supplies to help, including seeds, seed-starting kits, grow lights, growing trays, hydroponic supplies, and more. Read our review.

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Best Hummingbird Feeders

Hummingbirds play a key role in pollination, and their populations are on the decline. Help them (along with bees and butterflies) by planting milkweed, salvia, agastache, and other pollinator-friendly native plants. A feeder will help supplement the birds’ diet. Just be sure to keep it clean. You’ll find a beautiful assortment on Etsy. Read our review.

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Best Lawn Care

If you love the look of a classic lawn and your area has sufficient rainfall to sustain it, try Sunday Lawn Care. Using a sample of your soil and climate data, the company provides grass seed, non-toxic fertilizer, and pet, pest, and drought-control solutions that will help your lawn thrive. (Of course, rewilding your lawn will always be “greener” than even the greenest grass.) Read our review.

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Best Power Tools

According to the EPA, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and gardening equipment account for nearly 5% of America’s air pollution: a frightening thought. When you’re due for an upgrade or a replacement, go electric. Ego makes quality outdoor power tools that get the job done without spewing fumes. Read our review.

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Best Hand Tools

Felco has been making exceptional gardening tools for over 75 years. I received my Felco 2 pruning shears as a birthday gift five years ago and I use them for gardening and when making bouquets with tough, woody stalks. They feel great in the hand and will last a lifetime. Read our review.

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Fresh off the (digital) press:

Bluedot Living Kitchen’s latest issue is here!

Inside each issue of Bluedot Living Kitchen, you’ll find fresh cooking inspiration for seasonal, planet-friendly eating, tools and tips for creating a more sustainable kitchen, and inspiring stories of the people behind your food. Don’t miss the groundbreaking education and regenerative farming work of Vermont’s Shelburne Farms, our tribute to maple syrup, Easter, and more!

Claim a free sample of this issue now! No payment information required.

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The Perfect Earth Day Project: DIY Seed Balls

“There is a little explosion of color, life, and hope carried in each tiny seed,” writes our garden correspondent Laura McLean. In a recent article, she teaches us how to make seed balls, which can deploy gorgeous native wherever we choose. If you love flowers and the feel of a little dirt on your hands, consider getting the supplies together now and hosting some friends to make seed balls. It’s also a great project for kids.

Learn about “guerilla gardening” and how to make your own seed balls.

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A Path for Pollinators

In the suburbs of South Melbourne, where concrete sprawls and nature is an afterthought, something unexpected has taken root. A once-barren stretch of pavement now supports clusters of native flowers.

This is just one link in Heartscape's Melbourne Pollinator Corridor, a first-of-its-kind initiative in Australia. Stretching five miles from the Royal Botanic Gardens to Westgate Park, the project uses native plantings to connect fragmented urban spaces, creating stepping-stone habitats for pollinators — bees, butterflies, hoverflies — that urban sprawl has been steadily squeezing out.

Learn more about this beautiful initiative to protect pollinators and the woman who started it with a single garden. Do you think that you could create a pollinator path in your community?

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Want to get in touch? I’d love to hear from you. Tell me about your favorite sustainable products, topics you’d like to see covered, or anything else that’s on your mind — email marketplace@bluedotliving.com.
I’ll see you again in two weeks.

– Elizabeth

Elizabeth Weinstein, Bluedot’s Marketplace Editor, lives in Manhattan with her husband; her papillon, Finley; and her cats, SanDeE* and Modell. When she’s not asking the folks at Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom to try on all of their sustainable sneakers in a size 9½, she can be found at the Union Square Greenmarket or gardening on her rooftop terrace.

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