Category: Birds

Birds / Carbon Garden / Conservation / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Flowering Shrubs / Food Forest / Foraging / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Larval Host Plants / Native Trees / Permaculture / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Part 2: PNV: Potential Natural (Native) Vegetation

  Appropriate Species for Tiny Forests in Eastern Virginia Tiny forests designed following the Miyawaki method include a wide variety of native trees, shrubs, and ground covers planted randomly and densely, varying the heights of trees to establish a canopy layer, intermediate layers, and a ground cover layer.  Plant as many as 3 to 5 plants per square meter into the prepared soil.  Plants grow quickly, reaching for the light.  A forest that takes a century or more to develop...

Beneficial Insects / Birds / Citizen Science / climate change / Conservation / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Hummingbird Gardening / Keystone Species / Larval Host Plants / Lepidoptera / Native Trees / Phenology / Weather / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Beyond Flowers: How to Support Pollinators in Your Own Yard

  Have you ever planned a party, set up the bar and buffet, and then felt disappointed by how few people turned up to enjoy your hospitality?   We are left wondering what went wrong.  Curious gardeners planting flowers to support pollinators have sometimes been left feeling that way in recent years.  We plant a tempting array of all the right plants and then sit watching and waiting for hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, and other winged pollinators to swoop in to enjoy...

Birds / boxwood / Carbon Garden / climate change / Conservation / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Evergreen trees / Flowering Shrubs / Food Forest / Foraging / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Hedge / Hedgerow / Heirloom plants / Native Trees / Ornamental Shrubs / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

 Hedges and Hedgerows for a Healthier and More Peaceful Life, Part 1

  The Living Fence Gardening is the art of domesticating the wild, of creating living geometry within our landscapes.  Order, symmetry, lines, and boundaries please the eye and soothe the spirit.  We are inclined to organize and define our spaces by dividing them up into smaller pieces we can manage, to protect them within walls and behind gates.  We contain what is ours, setting aside sacred space, our own ‘paradise,’ from the wider world.  We exclude the unwanted wildness living...

Beneficial Insects / Birds / Carbon Garden / Climate Change / climate change / Conservation / Edible Plants / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Invasive Plants / Larval Host Plants / Nuisance Plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Resource Protection / Soil Conservation / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

A History of Our War With Plants

  “I use only native plants, native to the planet Earth.  I am using indigenous plants; they are indigenous to this part of the universe.” Bill Mollison, Founder and Director of The Permaculture Institute     In the Beginning… Let’s begin with the obvious:  we live within an ever-changing ecosystem.  Europeans came to North America more than four centuries ago, cutting trees, planting fields, building homes and roads.  Native Americans also cut trees, built homes, planted fields, hunted, and lived...

Birds / Carbon Garden / climate change / Climate Change / Conservation / Evergreen Shrubs / Evergreen trees / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Larval Host Plants / Native Plants / Native Trees / Resource Protection / Soil Conservation / Tree Identification / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Myrica Is Mostly for the Birds

  A Mystery and A Memory We found several large evergreen shrubs in our new yard that we couldn’t immediately identify, when we moved here over a decade ago.  We could pick out the boxwood and Camellias, but we were especially curious about the very tall, open shrubs that the birds loved the most.  It was August, and tiny bluish gray drupes were ripening along this shrub’s woody stems.  Its leaves were fragrant.  Birds gathered in its dense and twiggy...

Animal repellant products / Birds / Bulb Gardening / Citizen Science / Conservation / Edible Plants / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Native Plants / Native Trees / Nuisance Plants / Poisonous Plants / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Plant Knowledge

  “Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?”  Dr. Carlos Castaneda     When a young graduate student in anthropology wanted to learn more about the medicinal uses of plants for his academic research in the early 1960s, so the legend goes, he sought out an old Mexican native, a brujero, known simply as don Juan, who lived in the Sonoran Desert.  Carlos asked to interview him about...

Birds / Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Conservation / Evergreen Shrubs / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Historic Trees / Native Trees / Ornamental Shrubs / Resource Protection / Wildlife Gardening

 by Rick Brown

The Bassett Trace Nature Trail 

              Colonial Williamsburg welcomes visitors to the natural beauty of one of the wilder, quieter portions of the historic area.     The Bassett Trace is named after Burwell Bassett, Martha Washington’s nephew and a Virginia legislator and congressman. In 1800, he purchased a white farmhouse near the trailhead.  In 1936, that farmhouse, now known as Bassett Hall, became the favorite home of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.  During the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, an...

Beneficial Insects / Birds / Bulb Gardening / Carbon Garden / climate change / Compost / Conservation / Deer / Evergreen Perennials / Evergreen Shrubs / Evergreen trees / Ferns / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Larval Host Plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Perennial Care / Phenology / Trees in Winter / Watering / Wildlife Gardening / Winter

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Winter in the Garden: To Do, To Do Less, and What to Avoid

  We can consider winter as the ‘weekend’ of the gardening year, both the last month and the first months of the year when we can enjoy a much-needed rest from the regular routine.  A period of rest and renewal restores energy to both the garden and the gardener.  It allows us time for reflection on the successes and challenges of seasons past and an opportunity to plan and prepare for the seasons to come. If winter is the weekend,...

Birds / Evergreen Shrubs / Flowering Shrubs / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Holiday Plants / Invasive Plants / Nuisance Plants / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

The Problems with Nandina

  What’s the big fuss about Nandina? It is attractive, easy to grow, and can be found growing throughout older neighborhoods in our area. Its berries (drupes) turn bright red in October, just in time to brighten up the winter landscape.  Some people cut the red fruit for use in holiday decorations. Nandina’s foliage may even turn bright scarlet after frost, depending on the cultivar. It can be a beautiful and useful plant. Nandina is so tough and versatile that...

Birds / Carbon Garden / Conservation / Edible Plants / Evergreen trees / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Historic Trees / Holiday Plants / Larval Host Plants / Native Trees / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Eastern Red Cedar: An Uncommonly Useful Tree

  If fragrance is the gate of memory, the spicy aroma of Eastern red cedar takes me back to childhood holidays.  My parents would load us in the car, about a week before Christmas, for a drive out to a friend’s farm where we could walk through the meadows in search of our Christmas tree.  After a lively debate about the trees we found, Dad would pull out an old handsaw and begin cutting the tree.  We would all help...