Learning to See the Beauty of Nature in Our Gardens
Ellen Sousa gardens, farms, writes and teaches from Turkey Hill Brook Farm, a small horse farm in the Worcester Hills of central Massachusetts. Author of The Green Garden: The New England Guide to Planning, Planting and Maintaining an Eco-Friendly Habitat Garden, published by Bunker Hill Publishing in summer 2011. She also blogs about habitat and earth-friendly gardening in New England and is on the team at Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. Follow @THBfarm on twitter.
Dear all, like many of us, I am still trying to make sense of the horror of what happened on Friday in Newtown, Ct. Although I feel a certain despair that our society has now reached a point of no return, I have to believe strongly in one thing. Children deserve to live in safety [...]
Remember the childhood rhyme: Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no Hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t Fuzzy, Was He? I never really understood what it meant either, but it was an appealing saying for a kid who loved soft and fuzzy stuff such as the down on a newly hatched chick, the velvety-soft nose of [...]
Almost a year ago to the day, we had a major early season snow storm that dumped 18″ of wet snow on our central MA farm. I wrote about it at When Life Gives You Storm Damage, Make Habitat and lamented the fact that we had lost a beautiful red maple near our barn, which was [...]
Do you grow vegetables at home? If so, I’m sure you don’t welcome wildlife into your veggie patches. Rabbits, groundhogs, deer, slugs, you name it, there’s some animal just waiting to devour your plantings and destroy all your hard work. Fencing (or a resident dog on duty 24/7) is usually the only way to keep [...]
It’s late summer in New England, and if you’ve spent any time outdoors in the past few weeks, you’ve probably witnessed the movements of the winged wildlife that are beginning to work their way to their winter homes. Flocks of Common Nighthawks are swooping the open skies at dawn and dusk, filling up on the [...]
It’s the Monday post-vacation writers’ block. I am just back from a relaxing and scenic getaway north of the border (that’s Canada), and today I’m far more interested in dreamily gazing at the photos of our holiday with just one more cuppa than putting fingers to keyboard. So, I hope you don’t find this too boring or [...]
Summer is finally here in New England! Many of our flowering plants are in their full summer glory and pollinators are actively visiting the nectar-rich blooms. As always, where there are lots of insects present, birds and other predators are also there to take advantage of the abundance. A few weeks ago, pollinator activity here [...]
It’s National Pollinator Week in the US! Let’s all tip our hats to the superheroes of the natural world, the pollinating insects, birds and other animals who enable 75% of flowering plants to set seed and reproduce, and many of our food plants to produce their crops! We need our pollinators! But pollinators need more [...]
Loyal readers may remember my posting last September, when I wrote about raising a Cecropia Moth caterpillar named Czech. Here he was, in his caterpillar prime, munching on wild cherry leaves in our mudroom in July: Well, I’m very happy to report that Czech, cozily wrapped in a silk cocoon of its own making, made [...]
Spring has arrived here in New England…very early this year and some would argue that we never even had a winter at all. But our native wild plants respond as they always do to the warming temperatures and the sunshine beaming through the as-yet-leafless trees – by bursting forth with flowers specially designed to tempt [...]
Like it or not, we gardeners have a hobby that puts us right on the front line of international wildlife protection during what scientists are calling the Sixth Age of Extinction (the last extinction age 65 million years ago marking the end of the dinosaurs). At this point, there may not be much we can [...]
News from Team Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
