Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
Healthy Gardens. Healthy Planet
Debbie Roberts is a landscape designer, garden coach, freelance writer, educator and Accredited Organic Land Care Professional who gardens on a woodland acre in southwestern Connecticut (zone 6). Debbie’s blog A Garden of Possibilities features plant profiles, insights on garden design, book reviews and musings on her efforts to continue to create a wildlife-friendly garden that the deer will not feast on. Debbie is also a member of a select group of international garden and landscape designers, The Garden Designers Roundtable, who blog monthly about various garden design topics. Follow Debbie on Twitter, @deb_roberts.
It’s spring in New England and that means the flowering dogwoods (Cornus florida) begin to take center stage in the garden. With a broad, umbrella-shaped crown, low almost horizontal branches and short, squat trunk, flowering dogwoods have a special character all their own. But this underappreciated beauty, native to eastern and central parts of the [...]
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, chances are you already ‘get it’. You understand the decisions you make in your garden – from the native plants you choose to plant (or the invasive plants you choose NOT to plant), to the way you maintain your wildlife garden and even the choice of hardscape materials you use [...]
Exposure to Lyme disease is a fact of life for many gardeners. Some of us spend a lot of time and money trying to reduce our risk of contracting the disease and it’s possible we’ve been focusing on the wrong variables. I recently attended a lecture by Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld of the Cary Institute [...]
Do annuals have a place in a wildlife garden? Absolutely. Annuals attract beneficial insects and many annuals are an important source of nectar for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. And let’s face it, no matter how many native trees, shrubs and perennials you have in your garden or even if you have a well-designed habitat garden, there [...]
At a recent gathering of professional landscape designers, the topic of designing gardens with native plants came up. Frankly, I was surprised by some of the comments I heard during the discussion. Several designers shied away from using native plants because they felt their “clients would never go for go for that kind of look”. [...]
Recently, fellow Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens team member, Genevieve Schmidt, wrote a post about native plant alternatives for several overused plants found in many gardens in California, where Gen lives, gardens and works as a landscaper. As Gen mentions in her post, Plant This, Not That: California Natives Edition, by simply looking beyond the [...]
A recent visit to the Cove Island Wildlife Sanctuary (CIWS) in Stamford, CT was truly a feast for the senses. It was a dull, dreary day and I was the only person walking around CIWS. But the garden was teeming with activity. The sounds of birds and insects were all around me, a steady buzz [...]
Recently, fellow Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens team member, Risa Edelstein wrote a fantastic post about the Top 10 Must-Have Books for Ecological Minds. If you haven’t done so already, make sure you check out the comments for names of additional books readers have found useful. After reading Risa’s post, not only did I [...]
When I was growing up in the small town of Hoosick Falls, NY, we were fortunate to live in a very unique location. Right next to door to our property was a large parcel of undeveloped, wooded land that was home to a stream and a pond. And right across the street from our house [...]
Ever since I read Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy, I have been an advocate for native plants. As a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers’ Sustainability Committee, I even helped write the organization’s guidelines on native plants. As a garden designer, I always look to native plants for the solutions I need [...]
