Contact MargaretArchive for the 'Crofton Info' Category
New Crofton Home Owners - Taming Your Yard (Part 2)
May 9th, 2008 Categories: Crofton Info
As a recent home buyer in Crofton, you may be discovering that the beautiful manicured beds and lawn need some basic spring maintenance – and you may not know where to start. Several days ago, I posted Part 1 of Taming Your Crofton Yard, which addressed the need to clean out your shrubbery beds, removing leaves and taking control of your pachysandra and other groundcovers.
Divide Your Hosta Plants
Another spring maintenance task, before planting your annuals, is to divide your hostas and other perennials. If you haven’t already done this, don’t wait another weekend. Pretty soon, they’ll be too big and too heavy to manage. I usually divide my hostas in mid-late April, but it’s not too late now.
What’s a hosta, you ask? Well, I’m no horticulturist, so I’ll give you the amateur answer: It’s a perennial plant with large leaves that produces a tall stem with blooms later in the summer. At least, that describes the hostas in my yard. Actually, there are many species of this lily-like plant, and I encourage you to read all about them. The variety I have doesn’t do well in the sun – it yellows and gets attacked by bugs – but it thrives in shady beds.
Hostas do well in Crofton, since there’s so much shade, but the problem with them is that a small plant can turn into one that’s larger than your shrubs, if it’s not divided periodically. I know it’s hard to imagine, but you can literally put the sharp blade of a shovel through the middle of a hosta plant and, with a little effort, divide it to remove half the plant. The remaining half will round out and you’ll never miss the part you removed; then you can plant the part you removed in another location – or give it to a neighbor. I’ve been known to leave a plant laying on the ground or even wrap it in plastic for days before re-planting, and it survived without any ill effects. After a while, you’ll probably have more hostas than your yard will accommodate, and you’ll be giving them or throwing them away! This photo shows four of them potted to give away.
Remove Un-invited Vines
As an amateur gardener, I have never uncovered the “secret” to eliminating wild vines that invade my beds (and sometimes my lawn) every year. If any readers have a suggestion, PLEASE comment on this post and share your suggestions with me and others in Crofton. In the meantime, I’ll do as I have for the past 30 years – pull them out by the roots the best I can, whenever I see them.
For the benefit of homeowners who never owned a home in an established neighborhood and may not have experienced these before, I’ll try to show you what they look like so you won’t assume they’re a ground cover planted by the previous owner.
On the right, you see a plant with three leaves on a thin stem that grows quickly along the ground and wraps itself around your shrubs and trees. I’ve been told it’s “wild strawberry” – but again, I’m an amateur at this so it probably has a scientific name. The closest thing to it that I could find on the USDA website was woodland strawberry.
All I know is that you’d better stop this vine the moment you see it, before it chokes the life out of plants you care about. In this photo, you see pachysandra at the bottom of the photo (a desirable ground cover that I have in some of my beds), the leaves of an azalea at the top, and that darn vine rapidly growing and attempting to take over and choke out everything else. Shortly after snapping this photo, I wrapped the vine around my hand and followed it to its root, where I removed it from the bed. If the ground is dry, the vine may break off without the root being pulled from the ground – if so, expect it to come back. Nothing seems to kill or prevent this stuff, at least not that I’ve found, except removing it by the root.
On the left, you see a plant with five leaves on a thin stem -this one likes to climb your trees, fences and even your house. It’s called Virginia Creeper. It’s a perennial that dies off during the winter, but comes back with a vengeance in the spring and summer. I remove this the same way as I did the strawberry vine, by pulling it out from the roots. However, if it has started to grab onto a tree or other surface, you may wish to clip it with your pruning shears every two or three feet to remove manageable sections of the plant. Again, getting the root is important, or it will come back.
Warning: Virginia creeper berries are highly toxic to humans and may be fatal if eaten. Its sap can also cause skin irritation in some people. If you have small children, obviously you have to be more diligent than those of us who just resent their intrusion on principal.
Some people confuse Virginia Creeper with poison ivy – the most obvious difference is that poison ivy has three leaves and red stems, and Virginia Creeper has five leaves and green stems. For more information about this plant check out the USDA Fact Sheet (PDF) and Plant Guide (PDF).
Challenges of an Established Yard
While challenges like these require some management, they’re a small price to pay for having beautiful mature landscaping. In fact, these vines like new yards and beds, as well, so you won’t be immune from them if you don’t have an established yard.
Chances are that the beautiful mature trees and landscaping in much of the Crofton are among the things that attracted you to this community. Enjoy, and watch for Part 3 of this series later in May.
Related Links:
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New Crofton Home Owners - Taming Your Yard (Part 1)
April 26th, 2008 Categories: Crofton Info
Crofton Maryland Real Estate often translates into “established” neighborhoods. This means extensive shrub and flower beds as well as mature trees and shrubs already in place – maybe even a few overgrown plants in need of pruning or removal.
Overgrown Shrubbery
For the sake of this series, I’m going to assume your established yard has a healthy lawn and no overgrown shrubs or trees. Hopefully they were well-manicured when you purchased your Crofton home or, in some cases, you may need to address those issues before taking on other chores in your yard.
Just this one paragraph for new homeowners on removing overgrown shrubs: Even when Larry and I were much younger, we usually hired someone else to do this for us. Some of my neighbors have removed overgrown shrubs by looping a heavy cable, chain or rope around the base of the shrub and hooking the other end to the bumper of a pick-up truck. There’s no labor-free way to achieve this. As to excess trees, you probably should hire a professional – assuming you don’t want to risk it falling on your house or a bystander.
Taming Your Yard
If this is your first Spring in your Crofton home, you’re probably looking around your yard and trying to decide what to do about all that “stuff” growing in the shrubbery and flower beds. The natural assumption to a gardening Newbie is that these plants are weeds – they’re certainly spreading like weeds.
Those plants growing in your beds are not necessarily weeds, however. In this photo, the green plants are pachysandra – a hardy ground cover that grows well in shady locations. I happen to be a pachysandra fan, at least when it’s used in moderation, but it does develop underground roots that eventually spread beyond the area you originally intended. That’s what happened here, in my yard.
The red-leaf plants in the photo are Japanese red maple trees that are “volunteers”, growing from the roots of this tree.
Does this mean you should feel guilty about removing these plants? Of course not! It’s your yard now, and you can choose to remove them entirely or make any other changes to your landscaping. Existing plants probably do need taming, however – now and every Spring.
Removing pachysandra that’s growing around the roots of shrubbery or creeping into the lawn is usually my first step, each Spring, after raking leaves out of the beds. In this case, I removed it from around the tree, along with stray shoots that were growing between the hostas pictured on the right. You can discard the pachysandra you remove, or you may wish to plant some of it elsewhere.
As to the baby red maple trees, I usually save them until friends or relatives come by, and they’re thrilled to take one home for planting in their own yards. These trees are very expensive when you purchase them at a plant nursery.
The finishing touch, after the surplus plants are removed, will be a 3–4 inch layer of hardwood mulch to cover the dirt and soaker hose. Since I keep up with my yard on a regular basis, I can normally tame my back yard in a day, my front yard in another day, and the two sides on the third day – even at the slow pace of someone my age. Thirty years ago, I would have gotten this done AND had time to go watch my sons’ baseball game the same day.
When you buy a home, you’ll want to put your own stamp on the landscaping, whether your home is located in an established neighborhood or newer one. There are advantages to each of course:
- A new home requires planning, purchasing and planting from scratch, and then sometimes waiting years for your yard to reach its full potential.
- If you buy a home with an established yard, chances are you can achieve that full potential quickly with routine maintenance that includes taming your yard each spring.
I’ve been taking pictures as I go, this year, so I can create a series of posts for new home owners in Crofton who may feel a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of taming your yard before summer.
Coming soon:
- Recycling Your Pachysandra
- Dividing Your Hostas and Removing Uninvited Vines
- Pruning your Shrubs
- Fertilizing your Flowering Shrubs
These topics will be linked to the articles once they are posted online.
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Crofton History - The Levitt Chapter
April 2nd, 2008 Categories: Crofton Info
If you’re relocating to the Washington-Baltimore area from another part of the country, you may notice that some sections of Crofton are eerily similar to other neighborhoods in Maryland.
In fact, Crofton may resemble a place you previously lived in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, or Pennsylvania. It’s no coincidence – hundreds of communities, with many of the same home designs and floorplans, were built by Levitt and Sons over many decades and around the world.
Since 2008 is the 40th anniversary of the first Levitt homes in Crofton, I thought it might be interesting to take a little stroll back to the early days of Levitt and Sons and the homes they constructed in Crofton over the course of about five years.
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Levitt and Sons, Inc. – From the Beginning:
Levitt and Sons was established in 1929 by the son of immigrants, real estate attorney Abraham Levitt and his sons William, as President, and Alfred, as Chief Architect and Planner. They started construction the same year on their first community at Rockville Centre, New York, and expanded to several other states over the next four decades.
From the Levitt Corporation website:
William Levitt anticipated a pent-up demand for housing after World War II, and the company started acquiring land while he was still serving in the Pacific with the Seabees, the U.S. Navy’s construction unit. The company came up with a design for a basic house, together with a way to reduce construction procedures to 26 steps. This process, together with their mechanical and technical innovations, revolutionized the home-building industry.
Levitt actually created an assembly line to build houses on the site, using men and equipment much as they do in the auto industry. The essential difference between Detroit’s methods and Levitt’s was that auto makers moved materials past a waiting line of men in a factory, whereas the Levitt system moved the workmen from house site to house site past a waiting line of material in the field. Thus, in an industry notorious for wasted time, motion and material, the company introduced previously unheard-of logistics, timing and efficiency.
William took over the company in 1954 and continued to operate it until 1972, even after selling the company to ITT in 1968 and ITT’s subsequent loss of the company in 1971 due to an anti-trust ruling.
Levitt homes in Crofton were built between 1968 and 1973,
in the community developed by Crawford Corporation.
Over the years, Levitt companies established a modular home building subsidiary, expanded overseas, and changed hands several times. The Levitt Corporation and many of its subsidiaries are still in business today, even after the 2007 bankruptcy filing by Levitt and Sons, LLC and 37 subsidiaries. While Bill Levitt did return to the building industry in the late 70’s, he was barred by the courts from using his own name, a trademark of the company he sold.
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Levitt Homes in Crofton:
All Levitt-built detached homes in Crofton were constructed on a slab, but some of their townhomes do have basements, depending on the topography of the site. Unlike new homes by today’s builders, with endless options, interior colors were pre-determined based on the model – my first Levitt home, for example, was an Enfield model townhome which came with a yellow powder room, pink bathroom, and brown kitchen appliances.
Other standard features of Levitt homes in Crofton (and even homes built ten years earlier in neighboring Bowie) include the following: tile squares in every room of the house, except bathrooms which had ceramic tiles; speckled spray paint on all the walls and doors; metal closet doors and hollow-core interior doors throughout; and sliding glass doors to the back yard. Many of these standard features have been updated and upgraded over the years, and bear little or no resemblance today to homes occupied by the first Levitt homeowners.
Levitt-built detached homes which originally sold in Crofton in the $20-30,000 range now often sell for more than $400,000, while townhomes which sold new in the $20,000’s now sell for nearly $300,000. You can scroll over the photo to see the model name of pictured homes. (These homes are not currently for sale.)
Ardsley – 4–bedroom cape cod
Buckingham /Brandywine – 3–bedroom rancher
Cambridge – 3 bedroom 2–story colonial
Canterbury – 2–bedroom townhome
Devon – expanded 3–bedroom rancher
Dorset – 3–bedroom townhome
Enfield – 3–bedroom townhome
Gibbon – 3–bedroom townhome
Gladstone – 4–bedroom 2–story colonial
Jamestown – 2–bedroom one-level townhome
Roxbury – 4–bedroom colonial
Severn / Susquehanna – 4–bedroom colonial
Tred Avon – 4–
bedroom “California-style” rancher
Wicomico – 3–bedroom rancher
All photos copyright 2008. M.Woda
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I hope you enjoyed this information about Crofton history, and I invite you to share your own photos or stories about Levitt’s first years in Crofton. You can email the information to me now, and I’ll include it in another post on this topic later in the 40th anniversary year of Levitt in Crofton.
In addition to Time Magazine article about William Levitt and the Levitt Corporation website (links above), another interesting source of information about the company and its history is LevittownBeyond.com.
Other Levitt Communities in Maryland:
(a partial list)
- Belair at Bowie
- Quaker Ridge at Northampton
- Lake Village
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Harbor Ridge at Joppatowne
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Strathmore at Bel Pre
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Rock Creek
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Pickering Circle
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Relocating to Anne Arundel County?
February 29th, 2008 Categories: Crofton Info
Margaret Woda is your real estate connection to Fort Meade, Northrop Grumman, the U.S. Naval Academy, BWI, and anywhere in Anne Arundel County or the greater Baltimore-Washington area.
When you relocate to Anne Arundel County, Maryland, you will fall in love with the stunning scenery, laid-back atmosphere, and local fare from the Chesapeake Bay. The county’s convenient location, less than an hour from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., may attract residents and businesses alike -but it’s not the only reason they stay.
You’ll see why residents love it here, as you explore the pages of my Anne Arundel County Relocation Package, featuring some of my blog posts about communities, things to do, and the quality of life in this area. There’s no substitute for a personal tour, however, and I hope you’ll contact me to schedule a visit soon.
In the meantime, check back often because I’ll be adding new posts to this Relocation Package, from time to time.
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Anne Arundel County Info At Your Fingertips
January 1st, 2008 Categories: Crofton Info
Crofton MD News –
Crofton residents, have you tried the new online resource for finding county facilities near your home? It’s called MyAnneArundel.
When you visit the Anne Arundel County website at www.aacounty.org, you will see the MyAnneArundel banner near the top of the home page. Just click on the banner to enter MyAnneArundel and learn about the two types of reports that are available for the address you enter, General Information and Crime Statistics.
When I entered my Crofton MD address, for example, here’s what I learned in the General Information Report:
COUNCIL DISTRICT:
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Crofton is located within Council District 7
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Crofton’s County Council Official is Edward R. Reilly
PUBLIC SAFETY:
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Police Station – Western District station at 8273 Telegraph Rd.
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Fire Station – Arundel Volunteer Fire Department at 2380 Davidsonville Rd.
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Public Library – Crofton Branch Public Library at 1681 Riedel Rd.
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Senior Center – O’Malley Senior Center at 1275 Odenton Rd.
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Hospital – Anne Arundel Hospital at 2001 Medical Parkway
WASTE MANAGEMENT:
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Crofton trash collection – Monday/Thursday
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Crofton recycling – Monday
Other information in this report includes distance to the nearest facilities (mentioned above), the holiday trash collection schedule for Crofton, the nearest waste management convenience center, a Polling Place Locator, information about roads including a link to the Bureau of Highways, and an aerial photo showing my property and immediate neighbors.
As to the Crofton crime report, I was pleased to see that criminal incidents were down in my neighborhood this year from last. There were no rapes, sex offenses, abductions/kidnapings, or attempted suicides during 2007.
I think MyAnneArundel will be very helpful for current Crofton residents and newcomers alike. Why don’t you give it a try?
WHO WANTS TO MOVE TO FLORIDA – Celebrate “F is for Florida in February” with Margaret on February 7 at 7 p.m., and learn about life in Florida from several Florida real estate agents. More information and reservations
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