Nurture Native Nature

In the context of creating a healthy yard ecosystem fireflies are just another insect we need to provide habitat for. Yet 2,000 firefly...

There were no happy birds in my yard on a warm spring day last week. On Friday I watched them flitting around my neighbor’s yard...

I thought I was done winter sowing in the first week of January when I planted 100 different native plant seeds and put the trays outside...

My tiny, semi-urban, rewilded yard surprises me. Every. Single. Day. This past Sunday it was deathly quiet in both the front and...

Soon after I started working on a post focused on invasive nandina (Nandina domestica), I went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a...

In the middle of the brown landscape of winter a flash or orange and silver movement caught my eye. It startled me and when I looked a...

My biophobic, eco-clueless neighbor found dead snakes in her driveway and posted in our neighborhood group because she wanted to know if...

I appreciate how social media can connect me to so many like-minded people who are also working to restore nature where they live. It’s...

My advocacy for nature puts me outside my conflict comfort zone. I find myself consistently protecting my rewilded yard from neighboring...

Nature is such a powerful cure-all that ecotherapy uses it as a tool to professionally boost growth, healing and reduce stress. It is...

I’ve recently had a paradigm shift about spending so much energy making my rewilded yard more approachable, neater, or more traditionally...

My September blooming native plant #9 is spotted beebalm or horsemint (monarda punctata), a fragrant herb in the mint family with a...

My September native plant pick #5 is white swamp milkweed or aquatic milkweed (asclepias perennis), one of many native milkweeds in...

My September native plant pick #4 is common boneset (eupatorium perfoliatum), also called thoroughwort because of the way the stems go...

There seems to be a special place in all secular and religious belief systems for the idea that things happen for a reason. A few days...

OR How to optimize the habitat value of your yard. In his book Nature’s Best Hope Doug Tallamy explains how “greedy” he is when it...

The traditional gardening world often fetishizes exotic and rare plants. The latest trends trickle down to homeowners. Big box and...

Last spring most of the spring native plant sales vanished because of the pandemic. This spring a little normalcy has returned, but...