Thanksgiving brings us a feast that, for many gardeners and naturalists, signifies the final harvest and close of the growing season. As we draw further away from the growing season and nearer to the winter solstice, many of us turn our focus to bringing light and greenery into our homes. Whether...
Fall is an excellent time to add new trees or shrubs to the landscape and many of us have already taken advantage of mild weather and sunny days to get new plants in the ground. With the lion’s share of work complete after digging, planting and mulching are finished, we often overlook some of...
Insects are a celebrated part of our natural ecosystems, but when they enter our homes, it’s rarely anything to celebrate. Each fall as cold weather closes in, there are a few usual suspects that surface at my house to cause a hubbub. However, these exotic houseguests are rarely a...
Images of witches, skeletons, and other specter abound this time of year. But we really don’t need to look much beyond the natural world for a dose of spooky entertainment? This week, I’ve compiled my list of the top four spookiest native trees that all offer some great Halloween-related...
Fall color is upon us with so many plants entering their annual push toward winter dormancy and putting on a great display in the meantime. As deciduous plants show their true colors this time of year, it offers the observer an opportunity to quickly identify many species by the color and...
For many gardeners, an entire season of continuously blooming plants is a primary goal. Not only do these fantastic flowers deliver ornate beauty throughout the year, but they are also greatly beneficial to pollinators by providing a continuous food source of pollen and nectar. Since...
The term native often means different things to different people. Most definitions draw a line between geography and time scale which typically is demarcated by the point of human intervention or influence on the landscape. I really like this definition from the Forest Service in 2012, “A...
Shade trees are some of the most valuable plants in most urban landscapes. They provide energy saving shade as well as valuable habitat for wildlife in a sometimes otherwise inhospitable built environments. However, a mature shade tree takes considerable time to develop the canopy and...
Cover cropping is a practice we often associated with larger scale farming, but they have the same great benefits in our home vegetable gardens. A cover crop is a crop that is grown for protection and enrichment of the soil rather than for harvest. Since they are not harvested for use...
Every gardener has several of those go-to plants, the ones that seem to always grow nicely in their particular gardening system, making them a repeated addition over the years. I just love it when one of these go-to specimens can not only provide ornamental beauty, but an edible harvest as...
