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Chill Out: The Climatic Factor Every Native Plant Gardener Must Know
Winterberry holly. © Trudy Walther Is it safe to use native plants from seeds collected far away from where you are planting them? It might be, depending on what kind of site conditions you are facing...
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Designing a green roof is always a challenge. Rooftop botany is so very much different than ground level botany. Winds can dessicate in a matter of hours and temperatures can easily reach twice those...
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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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Gardening With Natives is for the Birds
February is National Bird Feeding Month. The birds are really hoping you will celebrate because the unusual weather has wreaked havoc with their food sources. While it is nice to add feeders to your...
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Evaluating Native Shrubs
Sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) has proven to be a stand out in Dr. Lubell’s research studies. In my last post, I told you about work being done at the University of Connecticut on breeding sterile...
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Curb Appeal in a Wildlife Garden
A patch of native ferns and Virginia bluebells herald Spring Ah, Spring! It’s been a long, cold, snowy winter here in Connecticut and the arrival of the first day of Spring is a welcome event. Like...
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Wildflower or Robo-Plant? Trends Toward C4 Gene Implantation In C3 Plants.
This is a call for a full press effort to encourage and teach the importance of sustainable lifestyles throughout our communities. It is now crucial for us to conserve water, build green and create...
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Native Plants – Availability and Size Class “the chicken and the egg”
Fringed sage, Artemisia frigida As a practitioner and provider of Native Plants one of the challenges we are perpetually faced with is the request for “Larger Materials”. People are constantly looking...
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Florida Green Roof Providing Habitat, Clean Rainfall and Fresh Cool Air
I am so excited to be bringing vertical green to a new coffee shop on the main street of Downtown Disney. The project’s primary designer has been so exciting to work with on this project....
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Deer and Drought
Mule deer mom and half-grown fawn crossing an urban street–headed for greener pastures? Normally when I come in from working in my yard, I smell like earth, sweat and whatever plants I’ve been working...
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Skunk Rue
Henry Mitchell, that grand old garden writer, once wrote of a favorite plant that he had never seen a photo that would make anyone want to grow it, and he had never met a gardener who, having seen it,...
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Small Patch Green, Value of Reconciliation Ecology and Wildflower Plantings
Wildflowers can help save the world. But instead of telling the world how, we are hiding the truth. For any movement to succeed, there must be widespread grass roots support for the cause. Today...
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Native Plantings in Public Spaces: Beautiful and Functional
Tour attendees get a personal tour of the prairie by one of the volunteers who maintains the site. Last night I attended an organized native plant landscape tour by the local Wild Ones chapter. The...
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Fall Foliage in the Desert Southwest
A number of desert plants do change color in the autumn. Photo by J. A. Soule Many in our area have moved to the Southwest from “back East” and become nostalgic as the days shorten into autumn – they...
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Taming Rattlesnake Master: Profile of an Unusual Native
Everything about rattlesnake master is bold and wild – strong, upright flowerstalks, spine-edged silver foliage and spikey, spherical, white flowerheads. Combine this prairie perennial with any other...
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Native Stars of My September Garden
September in one of my perennial gardens I have a secret to tell you – I’m glad summer is over! While I’m reluctant to admit it, I find the summer garden a bit too demanding on a lot of levels. I’m...
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Getting Native in Lincoln
My city is making strides, bit by bit, in creating areas of partly native plant landscapes. It’s certainly good to see. Yet new spaces are still often dominated by the same exotic plants you’d see in...
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A Recipe for an Autumn Habitat Garden
Creating your own habitat garden filled with native plants is easier than you think. Here’s a simple recipe for an autumn habitat garden filled with goodies for local wildlife that calls your garden...
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Sowing the Seed Heads of Love
I tried really hard to come up with a cheesy title for this piece based on the continual 80s music soundtrack I have in my head, and I think I succeeded. Name the band, get a free prairie!* But more to...
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Less Honey Bee, More Native Bee
Stop with the honey bee talk. Every day I come across a half dozen new articles on the plight of the European honey bee — it’s become sheer agony for me. Frankly, even though neonics and glyphosate and...
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