<h3>Greenscape Garden & Gifts
Mission Gardening: A Victory for the Environment</h3>
by Linda Wiggen Kraft
Jennifer Loyet-Schamber and her family have owned Greenscape Garden & Gifts in Manchester, MO for twenty years. Jennifer is a major force in the region promoting sustainable gardens and landscapes. She brings the understanding of how and why each and every home garden can be a habitat that is not only beautiful, but also a life enhancing system. She wants people to plant Mission Gardens, like the Victory Gardens of World War two. Only this time the war is about the assault on our environment, loss of habitat and lack of knowing how to grow our own food.
Jennifer and her staff are educators about plants and products that help create eco-friendly gardens. Tammy Behm works closely with Jennifer and together they have created programs to help customers “connect the dots” and see the big picture of gardening. As they see it, all gardens can have the mission of sustaining life. One of the Greenscape sustainability programs is “Show Me the Monarch.”
Show Me the Monarch offers a free monarch host plant, free membership to Missouri Prairie Foundation and more information on how to help monarchs survive. Partnering with MonarchWatch.org, adults and children can find out how to grow gardens that contain milkweed plants, the one plant monarchs need. If there are not enough milkweed plants, monarchs will become extinct. Plants for this program are screened through MonarchWatch.org, they provide food and shelter, and no chemicals like neonicotinoids or other insect harming chemicals are used on them.
Also available is “Eco-Easy”, a labeling and grouping of plants and products that are easy to use, easy on the earth, bio-beneficial and work together. This system includes native and other plants that grow well in Missouri, products to help the soil, soil, pest management products and organic fertilizers. Plants include Grow Native, Plants of Merit and others that support the environment and grow well here. Deer Free Zone plants are grouped in one area to help those who want to grow a garden, not a deer buffet.
Greenscape Gardens reaches out into the community too. Working directly with Circle of Concern, a food pantry program and Parkway Southeast Middle School children are growing food at the school to donate to the food pantry and learning how to grow healthy food for their families.
Jennifer’s and Tammy’s goal is to educate people, so that creating life enhancing habitats for bio-diversity and growing healthy edible gardens will be the mainstream norm. For now, making the journey to Greenscape Gardens and Gifts helps us all become mission gardeners who bring about this change.
Greenscape Gardens & Gifts is located at 2832 Barrett Station Road in Manchester, MO 63021. Please call 314-821-2440 or visit online at www.greenscapegardens.com