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Native Plants: The More the Merrier
This spider is taking advantage of dense plantings to set a trap for flying pollinators approaching the conoclinium coelstinum. If you’ve ever shopped for perennials you’ve undoubtedly seen the plant...
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How to Design Your Native Plant Wildlife Garden
As I travel around the country speaking to various groups about Ecosystem Gardening, and how people can garden sustainably, conserve natural resources, and create welcoming habitat for wildlife in...
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Football and the Native Plant Garden
‘Purple Dome’ is a short selection of the native New England aster with attractive and rich purple and gold flowers. Fall is one of my favorite times in my native plant garden. For all the delicate...
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Too Much Biodiversity is Bad News for Wildlife
Finding the optimal diversity of plant species will encourage more wildlife, including beneficial insects. Native plants offer the gardener an overwhelming array of benefits, but they are not without...
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Tips from Tallamy on Curb Appeal
“Plants are more than decoration.” Doug Tallamy spoke recently to an enthusiastic crowd at a sold-out event held at Greenspring Garden, in Fairfax County, Virginia. Dr. Tallamy, speaking on the topic...
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California Native Garden Design: Misnomers and Plant Selection
Invasive mustard plants cover the summer hillsides. I am asked many questions as a designer of native gardens, some more often than others. Today I thought I would take time to address two such query’s...
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Sequence of Bloom in Your Wildlife Garden
Sequence of bloom – as some native perennials fade, others begin to flower and take center stage. One of the most challenging aspect of designing a wildlife garden is figuring out sequence of bloom,...
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Revolutionize Your Lawn
Lawnscape with sprinkler system wasting water in the hot part of the day. (The mule deer are just passing through.) With much of the Southwestern US, including the valley where I live, in drought–a...
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Send a Message, Start Digging
It is a gorgeous late evening as my wife and I return home from a dinner celebrating 10 years since our first date; I’d venture to say it is the first perfect evening all spring. The low sun casts that...
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6 Tips for Designing With Native Plants
As a landscape designer, one of the most common complaints I hear about native plants is that they are too messy, weedy-looking, unstructured and unkempt to be used in a designed landscape. While...
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Hellish Heliopsis
Does this look like the face of a bully? It looks innocent enough. A is for aggressive. B is for bully. C is for colonizer. The ABC set of descriptors are synonymous with invasive species. Invasive...
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My Roadside Garden
It’s a jungle in there! Full frontal view, Spring 2013. The North American Aesthetic What is that? What is a North American garden? It’s not an English garden, European garden or Japanese garden....
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Plants vs Unwelcome Guests (and Zombies)
If only the plants featured in Plants vs. Zombies acted as they do in the game we’d all be a lot safer. Alas, I was sad to discover this summer when I planted peas that they do not shoot from the plant...
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Can you spot the rayless sunflowers in this bed? There are about 20 flowers blooming. As I discussed in Adventures in Creating a Native Garden back in June 2013, I’d planted some rayless sunflowers...
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School Habitat Garden in Illinois Prairie Country
Building a Habitat Garden at Carrie Busey Elementary School — 4th graders carry corrugated drain pipe to be installed under a dead tree wood slab to create habitat for wildlife.Photo copyright Rick...
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Plan ahead!
Plants don’t a have a choice–they must do the best they can where they are. Sometimes Mother Nature doesn’t leave enough growing space for her trees and shrubs. Once the plants start growing out in...
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Lovely Larrea
For an unusual herb in your herb garden, why not feature a unique desert shrub that rewards the extra water by adorning its branches with masses of vivid yellow, star-shaped flowers? I am speaking of...
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Plant This, Not That: Shade Plants for Suburban/Urban Woodland Buffers
The exotic (non-native) Japanese Pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis), periwinkle (Vinca minor), English ivy (Hedera helix) and Wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) have long been staples of New England...
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How ‘Wild Ones’ Got It Wrong on Native Plant Cultivars
‘Red Sprite’ winterberry cultivar on the High Line in New York City. Photo by Olver Rich. Rights reserved. Wild Ones is a highly respected non-profit that champions the cause of native plants and...
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Managing your Native Landscape to Support Pollinators
We can all do more (or less) to manage our landscapes for pollinators. Resist the urge to clean up your landscape; instead, leave natural items such as plant stems, logs, dead trees and leaves....
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