Like Wildlife and Native Plants? Join the Club

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Just being out in nature touches the heart and soul, but when you share that passion with like enthusiasts, such as those in a nature organization, your enjoyment can increase exponentially. Likewise, being able to easily ID plants and animals greatly strengthens your connection to nature, and a fantastic way to expand your knowledge is [...]

Earth Day Tips

Julia Heliconian

Earth Day is this week, and I’m planning ways to give a little back to wildlife in my garden. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if every gardener made a pledge to give something back to our local species? Here’s some ideas to get you started: Install a Wildlife Pond. When you add a pond to [...]

Weeding the Beautiful Wildlife Garden

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To keep the beautiful wildlife garden beautiful, we work to maintain it, including weeding. Early spring is the best time to get ahead of the weeds, as the weed seedlings are much easier to pull before they get well established.  I must caution you, however, not to make the mistake that I made for so [...]

My Favorite Garden Tool

Photo by Daniel Zanetti, Wikimedia Commons

Every now and then, I see a poll of some sort on a garden website that goes “What’s your favorite garden tool?” This is almost always a ploy to sell me garden shears with special handles made out of synthetic unicorn leather and held together with composites first used on the space shuttle. But while [...]

Where The Buffalo Once Roamed

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  I love prairies. I am a Midwesterner and prairies are encoded in my genetic makeup.  Vast blue skies, prairie plants  and views that seem to stretch forever,  call to me in a manner that is indescribable. (Clay and Limestone) When you think of Tennessee, you probably think of the The Smoky Mountains National Park, [...]

Small But Beneficial Pond

A small pond can provide drink for wildlife and a place for dragonflies and amphibians to lay their eggs.

When I first started wildscaping, providing adequate water for wildlife was the most intimidating aspect. I started very small — a saucer of water for a toad — and gradually worked my way up to larger bodies of water, always approaching projects with frugality in mind. I know many other homeowners are in the same boat, so [...]

Reconciliation Ecology and the Beautiful Wildlife Garden

© Adrian Ayres Fisher

The moment I encountered the term “reconciliation ecology,” I knew I had found a perfect description for the way I garden. Coined by evolutionary biologist Michael Rosenzweig and featured by Douglas Tallamy in Bringing Nature Home, reconciliation ecology is defined as “the science of inventing, establishing and maintaining new habitats to conserve species diversity in [...]

The Value of Saucers

A saucer placed on an upright log makes a quick and inexpensive birdbath.

Perhaps the most critical element of a wildlife habitat is a water source, especially in places where drought is common. While there might be a variety of food sources available, water can be difficult for animals to find, and yet they cannot survive without it. On the other hand, ponds and decorative birdbaths can be [...]

I’m Dye-ing to be a Pioneer Woman!

Napkins dyed using Florida Native Plants

I dyed four linen napkins today using four different native plants to use as samples for an outreach program we (The Pine Lily Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society) are doing at the Osceola County Historical Society‘s Pioneer Village & Museum on Saturday for their 19th Annual Pioneer day.  Pioneer women didn’t have it [...]

Leave Those Dead Trees Standing

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Photo by chriswsn To all my beautiful wildlife garden people – don’t cut down your dead trees! If you think there’s no life left in that decomposing wood, you’re dead wrong. Snags provide fabulous wildlife habitats. Trust me, their woody lives are not over yet. When there’s no sign of green left in a tree [...]

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