Learning to See the Beauty of Nature in Our Gardens
Here in the southeastern U.S. we are fortunate to have a number of evergreen plants during the winter. Not all of those plants are native, of course, and a few of those non-native ones are even invasive. Since evergreen plants really stand out in the winter, now is a good time to work on removing […]
Native to the New World, Dalea is a genus with over 150 species. The plants are distributed from Canada to Argentina, but almost half of the species are found in the arid Southwest US and into Mexico. Dalea flowers are visited by many butterflies, especially the blues and hairstreaks. They are also wonderful larval […]
People that are just dipping their toe into the concept of using more native plants in their garden often wonder how many they should use. Reluctant to let go of some of their favorite non-native plants, they look for a recommended balance. I don’t blame them – I enjoy my gardenias! As a way of […]
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught.” ~Baba Dioum I love cruising the back roads of central New York State, where I live, to see the many different wildflowers growing across the fields and along the ditches. […]
Lately I have been desperately planting for pollinators. This has been a tough spring for my new garden – while I have had plenty of flowers, several of my berry producing plants have not been pollinated and formed berries. I haven’t seen nearly enough bees, not even on the clover flowers and if you don’t […]
Why would anyone want to grow irises? I’m not talking about the native ones that won’t grow in my garden because the soil is too dry for them. I’m talking about the fleeting, fragile blooms of the exotic Iris germanica and Iris siberica cultivars. Some people grow them simply because such beauty is so fleeting. […]
Here I go again, wading into the natives vs. non-natives plant debate to urge a bit of compromise. This time my focus is the minor bulbs, those tiny late winter and early spring jewels that herald the awakening of the garden. Long before the native wildflowers arise from their slumber, the giant snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii, […]
I know it’s still summer, we’re all still sweaty and itchy, and it seems difficult to thing about early spring, but now is the time to get those bulb orders done. No garden is too small to include some of the minor bulbs, especially snowdrops. The earliest plant to bloom in my Chicago area garden […]
