Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
Healthy Gardens. Healthy Planet
Stage one: Lawn removal & three bunching grasses Last September I began this set of garden adventures with the purchase of some Elliot’s love grass (Eragrostis elliottii) at a native plant sale. I knew I was going to reduce the tongue of lawn out into the front meadow and wanted to have the grasses to [...]
Ahhh, spring is on its way. My bones are starting to thaw. Longer days beckon me to spend time in the garden. And, being the good gardener that I am, I have an award-winning list of tasks that I ought to be getting to. Self-imposed oughts, of course. And I stress “self-imposed” because I bet [...]
With much of the Southwestern US, including the valley where I live, in drought–a historic, multi-year, drought showing no signs of breaking–I’ve been thinking about lawns. Americans are in love with our turf grass monocultures, so much so that we cultivate an estimated 46 million acres of lawn around our homes, schools, and parks–an area [...]
“How can I attract wildlife to my yard?” asked an attendee after one of my recent talks. My answer: “Cultivate untidyness.” Untidiness does not mean littering your yard with old tires or trash, or letting invasive weeds take over; it means letting at least some of it remain natural– “messy” to some eyes. The compunction [...]
The other day I jumped from my desk to follow a set of tree trucks, a wood chipper and a stump grinder, which had rumbed down my dead end road. My old wood chip pile had been in place for more than a year and what was left of it was mostly compost. So I was [...]
Out here in the Plains prairie resotoration is a sort of buzz phrase for people like me. Suddenly, visions of a horizon to horizon ocean of grass and wildflowers, dotted by herds of bison, rush like irish coffee to the brain. I swoon with warmth and alcohol. Oh, prairie. Marry me. Yet prairie restoration in [...]
A grand old sugar maple stood beside the road at the edge of the hayfield across from my house. By the time I moved to the neighborhood, this tree was no beauty: it had already lost its leader, and several branches jutted out as jagged stubs. Foliage up top was so sparse, the local redtail [...]
“Slovenliness is no part of Religion. Cleanliness is indeed close to Godliness,” wrote John Wesley in 1791. Wesley might have known a thing or two about Religion, but he clearly was no wildlife gardener. Indeed, the pursuit of order and extreme tidiness in gardens is one of the primary factors contributing to a lack of [...]
Most Californians understand that swelling populations in the southwest are and will continue to outpace water supply both from the California State Water Project sources and the Colorado River. Additionally, Golden state residents are learning that water-wise habits in our landscape and gardens can save up to 60 percent of this precious resource. But something [...]
A couple of years ago I gave a presentation to a hall full of Master Gardeners on my favorite topic: saving energy in our landscapes. I pointed out that if we gardened with more native plants, this would support regional pollinators, thereby potentially reducing the energy costs associated with replacing a vital ecological service. Compared [...]
