April 7, 1999
Green Man pushes organic, edible landscaping
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
You could call it a Gardening for Dummies service.
Or how about Instant Garden - no muss, no fuss and one call does it all.
This spring, an aspiring gardener who knows next to nothing or a veteran who has little time can call on the Green Man for a little strategic help in getting started. The Green Man, also known as Bruce Holland-Moritz, will come to your house and make having a vegetable or flower garden as easy as 1-2-3. The city resident offers a complete garden package, from planning and design to tilling and planting. Weeding and upkeep, however, are the owner's responsibility
"More people are getting into gardening in general," said Holland-Moritz, who also works for Vine Care, a vineyard management company. "Many people do it to unwind and like to sit outside in the yard watching things grow."
He calls one of his three garden plans this year a Y2K special. For anyone worried about food distribution breakdowns, the Green Man has a solution: grow your own food. Storage crops are the key to a Y2K garden, he said, and he will plan and sow a food production garden for anyone interested.
"I will plant corn, beans, squash, potatoes, rutabagas and things that store without refrigeration," Holland-Moritz said.
Launching a garden and landscaping business has been a dream of Holland-Moritz and his wife, Donelda, for years. He has worked in landscaping and as a nurseryman for 20 years and this spring they decided it was time to sow their own business.
Holland-Moritz will do anything from moving a tree to turning the soil on a farm garden to hand tilling a small plot for a city home. Donelda focuses on growing herbs and heirloom and scented flowers. The both work on their 20-acre nut tree farm in Lake Ann.
Sharing their gardening expertise and vision with others was a natural extension of the couple's love of gardening. The yard and gardens surrounding the Holland-Moritz's city home has been transformed in their nine years of combined efforts, when they started with just one lily and a few trees. Since then they have added fruit trees, numerous flowerbeds, berry bushes and extensive decorative landscaping.
"Gardening is so enjoyable, Bruce has really gotten me into it," said Donelda, who works as an x-ray technician at Munson Medical Center. "I want to put in a twilight garden in our home, which has flowers that are scented only in the evening and attracts the night moths."
The Green Man naturally emphasizes organic gardening methods and natural landscaping, joyfully replacing manicured lawns with natural landscaping and wildflowers. Often this style of landscaping is less expensive and easier to maintain, he said, which accounts for its growing popularity. Using a computerized garden design package, Holland-Moritz can help a homeowner create a backyard that will attract songbirds and butterflies and repel deer, who can damage landscaping plants and bushes.
"We live in a natural area and a lot of sites I see should be developed in a natural way, instead of turned into another Dearborn," Holland-Moritz said.
His formative years were spent growing up in Ann Arbor surrounded by raspberry and other berry bushes his mother nurtured. This established his primary interest: edible landscaping.
"My real area of expertise is edible landscaping, such as fruit trees, nut trees and berry bushes," said Holland-Moritz, who is working toward a degree in agriculture technology at Michigan State University. "People in town and on farms are looking for a shade tree and a food source; nut and fruit trees, while a long-term investment, do both."
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