Learning to See the Beauty of Nature in Our Gardens
As I walk up the road with my old dog, on a journey so familiar to us both, I pass under the Cottonwoods and notice they are already turning yellow-brown and.. dropping their leaves! In mid-August? This is unheard of in So California. But there it is: big piles of already fallen leaves wind-swept [...]
“When it comes to supplying food for other animals, no group of insects surpasses the moths and butterflies….. If we were forced to care for only one group of insects in our restored suburban landscape, we would do well to choose Lepidoptera” Doug Tallamy It’s June in Southern California, and Monkeyflowers cover the hillsides, [...]
“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.” ~Joseph Addison As spring has continued on its merry way, we have been overrun with birds in the garden. This is not a bad thing. It is actually a joyous time. In years [...]
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. ~Henry David Thoreau I have not always been a wildlife gardener. There was no talk of gardening for wildlife as I was growing up. Wildlife was found in the woods we explored, the woods where I camped and hiked as a child. It wasn’t until [...]
Talk to anyone who speaks, writes, or teaches about creating welcoming habitats for wildlife in our gardens, and sooner rather than later they will mention Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy. This book has become the “bible” for wildlife gardeners everywhere. Doug Tallamy clearly shows in this book how native plants form the basis of [...]
Happy Winter Solstice!! This is the third post in this series on native plants that any gardener can grow and love. First I focused on reliable, hardworking native perennials, and followed that up with native plant alternatives to invasive plants commonly used in gardens. This time I am spotlighting fall natives. With today being the winter solstice, [...]
The team at our sister blog, Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens, has been posting about Native Plant alternatives to commonly used plants. So far there has been: Plant This, Not That: California Natives Edition Plant This, Not That: New Jersey Natives Edition and most recently Plant This, Not That: Connecticut Natives Edition I thought I would take [...]
When it comes to gardening, Florida certainly is most interesting. Just as autumn seemed to be settling in with a low temperature of 48F in mid-November that brought spent seedheads to goldenrod and bluestem grasses, a second spring is happening, as temperatures returned to approach the high 80s for a few days last week. My [...]
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I have a lot to be grateful for these days. I want to say thank you to Carole for inviting me to post now every other Thursday. I am very excited to post more often and mid-week. I thought I would do a series of posts about my most reliable natives that [...]
To expect anything else is to set yourself up for heartbreak in your beautiful wildlife garden! As sure as you plant those bulbs or perennials a squirrel or chipmunk will discover the fresh dirt smell and pop those plants right out of the soil. Dang them! On a recent visit home, our son had an [...]
You won’t be sorry. Not only are there an amazing number of beautiful natives to light up your garden from spring through frost~The pollinators and other critters will love them. Asteraceae is one of the largest plant families and is found growing all over the world. So vast that it is subdivided into tribes which [...]
News from Team Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
