Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
Healthy Gardens. Healthy Planet
Last summer, my late husband Richard and I were preparing for a week-long stay at The Nature Conservancy’s Carpenter Ranch in northwestern Colorado, where thanks to the support of the Terra Foundation, we had a working residency designing a sculptural interpretive garden. Betsy Blakeslee, the ranch’s facilities manager, emailed before we left to ask if [...]
What are Down Under flowers? Nope, not plants from Australia, although those are worthy of an article too. Down Under flowers are those native plants with flowers that hang underneath their foliage and point towards the ground. These are the flowers that you sometimes have to get right down to ground level to actually see… [...]
A type of wildlife friendly landscape that is attracting a lot of attention these days is the meadow garden. Even though this style of garden is considered one of the most beneficial and informal there are key points one should take into account before jumping in with both feet. One of the main considerations [...]
American Plum (Prunus americana) American Plum is on the top of my list for an overall wildlife friendly native tree. Flowering much earlier this spring than usual here in Minnesota – it still managed to attract a huge variety of insect visitors. American Plum is native to the Dakotas southwards to Arizona and eastwards (except [...]
Are native plants important to the plant-pollinator communities? Sometimes I hear somebody say: “When it comes to pollinators, all flowers are the same; after all, nectars are all alike” or “my English ivy must be good for pollinators because it is teeming with insect visitors”. Such comments show a lack of information and understanding, as [...]
It could be said that the most important component of what we as native plant gardeners/designers do is educate people. We feel an inherent value, Joy, and necessity to set an example for others; to provide for wildlife in our suburban landscapes. Historically some claim the idea of the native plant wildlife garden began in [...]
I wrote about this on my blog, but it begs a wider audience, especially since so little of our prairie country is left. This week the Nebraska state senate is, most likely, passing a bill–LB473–that will allow the government to go on to private land and poison prairie dogs, which are being classified as noxious [...]
It’s definitely not spring here in Oregon yet. In fact, yesterday there was a dusting of snow on my car in the morning. But there are already plenty of flowers blooming including many from native plants. This is important- wildlife need food sources this early in the year and many plants in my yard provide [...]
When designing a native garden, plant selection is probably the one aspect people find most exciting–and daunting! At this juncture it’s good to pause and consider questions such as “What plant community do I live in?” and “How do I go about identifying this community?” This step requires one to look at the design process [...]
Not only are there plants that are protected from herbivory by ants , there are plants with a mutualistic relationship to ants for their seed dispersal. Readers who live in the eastern deciduous forest may know some of the plants: Erythronium americanum, Sanguinaria canadensis, Asarum canadense, Dicentra canadensis, Viola species, and Claytonia virginica. Many of [...]
