J. Mitchell Gardens & Stone

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Leonia, NJ
J. Mitchell Gardens & Stone

J. Mitchell Gardens & Stone is a Leonia N.J. based landscape company. We specialize in organic gardening & dry laid stone walls

Address

Leonia, NJ
07605

Telephone

(201) 206-9659

Website

jmgardensandstone.com

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Want your practice to be the top-listed Clinic in Leonia?

Here’s Why

We’re a small company, just my wife Jennifer and I. She is a designer and horticulturist, and I am a landscaper and dry stonewaller.

We prefer a more natural aesthetic over manufactured concrete blocks and pavers. We repurpose what’s already on site, as much as possible.

We garden organically, using chemicals only as a last resort. Companion plantings using “natives”,that are better adapted,and more “useful” to our local environment, than “exotic” ornamentals. Native plants also attract predator insects and birds which help keep pests down to a manageable level. As an added benefit, it is an oasis for pollinators.

In suburbia, people love their lawns. When we’re asked to provide lawncare, we start with a soil test. The objective is to only add what’s needed and nothing more. We rake in compost, mow high, to help shade out weeds, mulch the clippings, and leave them on the lawn. Let the clippings fertilize the lawn. The long term goal is to care for the soil, and let the soil care for the lawn.

Here’s why we’ve chosen to work this way. We’re both cancer survivors. She in’03, mine was in 2015. For me it was 10 months of chemo, and another 12 trying to get myself back to normal. When I was in treatment, it blew my mind, the number of people in that facility, every visit. Every group was well represented, every ethnicity, every gender, and sadly.. every age.

Seeing that level of diversity, my mind goes to environment. I’m not a doctor, or a scientist, but if you stand back and look. I can’t see this all being genetic. But, as a landscaper, I do have some control over our environment. Phytoremediation, using certain plants to clean our soil and water. Dense plantings in more urban areas to clean the air, break the “heat island” effect, and hopefully combat respiratory diseases in cities. Using biomimicry,working with nature to help redirect rainwater into our lawns and gardens to recharge our aquifers and keep it out of the sewers. Composting leaves on site to form humus, and redistributing it back into the garden. Much more cost effective than blowing it all into the street, then going to the garden center to buy bagged(in plastic) mulch, and topsoil. Not to mention how much carbon is sequestered by healthy soil. Or it could be as simple as using a rake over a leaf blower, to keep dust and particles( including vulcanized rubber, from tires, kevlar, and carbon ceramic from brake pads, dried mucus, from people spitting on the ground, and f***l matter from dogs.) from going airborne. It sounds gross,I know, but it’s something to think about next time your passing through one of these dust clouds.

The move is on now to “eat clean”. That idea should carry over to our environment as a whole. How we live, the air we breathe, the water we drink and bathe in, the community that surrounds us, all of these things play a role. When it comes to cancer, or any other malady, the focus seems to be on the cure. And that’s great. But, I think we could do well to focus just as hard on prevention.

So, when people ask me why we do things this way versus what others do , our answer is simply, “Here’s Why”.