Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
Healthy Gardens. Healthy Planet
Keeping your wildlife garden blooming through the summer can be a challenge especially during periods of drought and high temperatures. The colors of the spring garden rapidly fade but there are ways to keep plants attractive and blooming all season long. First, your garden should include a variety of plant species that bloom in different […]
Stop with the honey bee talk. Every day I come across a half dozen new articles on the plight of the European honey bee — it’s become sheer agony for me. Frankly, even though neonics and glyphosate and modern farming techniques play a key role in honey bee loss (among many other life forms), I […]
Wet spots in lawns and gardens can be problematic. Lawns may grow ‘unsightly’ mosses and lichens and garden plants may rot and die in pools of water. Often these wet spots are seasonal and appear after snowmelt or heavy rains. Frequently these water-logged depressions totally dry out later in the season and remain dry for […]
From late August through November the skies are full of migrating hawks, falcons, and eagles as they move south for the winter. …This site is called “The River of Raptors”, but until actually standing in the midst of so many migrating birds, the phenomenon is simply unbelievable! The sky was filled with birds, the counters […]
I was planting ferns the other day when I discovered something wonderful in my garden–a little native plant that I didn’t plant there. On my poor, soil-stripped lot, most likely the remnant of a cotton farm in the 1930s, native plants that aren’t basically weed trees are rare and celebrated. This one was particularly exciting. […]
This is a call for a full press effort to encourage and teach the importance of sustainable lifestyles throughout our communities. It is now crucial for us to conserve water, build green and create eco-friendly living, working and playing areas or, in the alternative, ‘robo-native-plants’ may be lurking right around the corner. Designing green roofs […]
When we garden or landscape with the aim of restoring habitat for wildlife, are we really making a difference? There’s precious little research quantifying the effects of our hard work, but new studies are encouraging. Earlier, I wrote about a study in Arizona which showed that yards landscaped in a way that mimicked surrounding wild landscapes, using […]
People have an insatiable need to classify things. We constantly sort the things around us into categories: red states versus blue states, native plants versus non-native plants, winners versus losers, fruit versus vegetable, work versus play, and so on. We create classifications to make it easier on us: so we can study how things work, […]
A good friend and former colleague of mine, Matt Greer, wrote the following piece for the CSR,Inc. blog back in 2010. Plant poaching is such an important topic; I felt it would be beneficial to share with the fine readers of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. Read on and be sure to share this information. […]
It is a gorgeous late evening as my wife and I return home from a dinner celebrating 10 years since our first date; I’d venture to say it is the first perfect evening all spring. The low sun casts that warm summer glow reminiscent of firesides in winter, the air is clear and soothing, trees […]
