Meet the Garden Care Team

Kari and Allison have been working as co-leaders on The Garden Care Team since last fall. The team is committed to implementing Mariposa's philosophy of “Find your home in nature.” Meaning, they are working with nature, rather than against natural systems, to care for all of our gardens.

How we do it

To make sure our client’s garden habitats stay in balance, we practice an ecologically based way of designing and caring for our gardens. This requires planting a diverse array of pollinator friendly plants and grasses, as well as providing water, food and shelter for any beneficial insects that may want to visit your garden. Some of the things we do during our garden care visits are:
* fertilizing with organic fertilizer,
* checking and adjusting irrigation seasonally,
* hand picking weeds,
* employing non-toxic and organic methods of pest management, such as hand picking or spraying with water
* planting cover crops in vegetable beds in the winter to boost the soil fertility and
* annually apply compost and mulch to the entire garden for soil health.
An assortment of native and pollinator friendly plants in all of our gardens promotes a medley of native bees, wasps and other pest predators that keep down pest pressure. The variance of plants and beneficial insects ensures that your garden stays in balance as an ecosystem, which makes it very low maintenance. When we install our gardens, we implement methods such as flame weeding and sheet mulching to control weed pressure. We work to build up the health and texture of your soil so that it will hold water longer, and make it available to your plants, even during a drought.