Category: climate change

climate change / Conservation / Deer Resistant Plants / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Flowering Shrubs / Foraging / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Native Plants / Propagation / Resource Protection / Wildlife Gardening

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Opuntia for Sustainable Gardens

Dangerously  Beautiful Opuntia Opuntia is a dangerous plant.  A beautiful plant, perhaps, useful and delicious; but always dangerous to anyone who comes near it.  Approach any Opuntia (Oh-POON’-tee-ah) you see with great care.  Wear gloves.  Wear heavy shoes and long pants.  Study it carefully before approaching and consider its mysteries with an open mind.  It is rife with contradictions. Opuntia is a native cactus that looks entirely out of place in most Virginia landscapes, though it grows here easily in...

climate change / Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Community Gardening / Conservation / Edible Plants / Farm-To-Table / Food Forest / Foraging / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Larval Host Plants / Permaculture / Resource Protection / Trees / Wildlife Gardening

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Secrets in the Pawpaw Patch

  If you happen to come across a pawpaw patch in the springtime, when the trees have covered themselves in small, deep red blossoms, please don’t be tempted to step closer to smell the flowers.  Admire them from afar.  Zoom in  to take a photo.  Like skunk cabbage and jack-in-the pulpit, pawpaw flowers have a putrid odor to attract the flies and beetles that pollinate them, and the dull color of their flowers resembles rotting meat. Pawpaw’s small flowers, rarely...

Carbon Garden / Citizen Science / climate change / Climate Change / Conservation / Evergreen Shrubs / Evergreen trees / Ferns / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Invasive Plants / Jamestown Island / Mycorrhizal Fungi / Native Plants / Native Trees / Permaculture / Protecting the Chesapeake / Shoreline Erosion / Soil Conservation / Sustainable Gardening / Weather / Wildlife Gardening / Williamsburg Botanical Garden

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Managing Rain and Run-Off with the Right Plantings

The Elements of Life Water, light, and air fuel our lives.  We depend on them, as does every plant and animal.  Light energy powers the chemistry of photosynthesis to transform elements like carbon and hydrogen into sugars, food.  Oxygen fuels the production of life energy in every living cell.  And water fills every cell of every living creature; gives us sap and blood; powers every process of life.  There is no life, not even the tiniest microbe, without water.  ...

climate change / Conservation / Edible Plants / Evergreen Perennials / Ferns / Foraging / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Jamestown Island / Larval Host Plants / Native Plants / Wildlife Gardening

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Summer Wildflowers on Jamestown Island

 May, 1607 Jamestown Island was uninhabited and covered in native vegetation in May of 1607 when the first English settlers chose to establish their colony on a small peninsula in the Powhatan River, now the James River.  That peninsula, along with most of the shoreline of the lower river, was under the control of the Powhatan Chiefdom, a confederation of thirty tribes by that time, based to the north at Werowocomoco, in what is now Gloucester County.  This chiefdom of...

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

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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...

Beneficial Insects / Bulb Gardening / Carbon Garden / climate change / Conservation / Ferns / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Geophytes / Propagation / Resource Protection / Soil Conservation / Spring / Sustainable Gardening / Water Wise / Weather / Wildlife Gardening

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Early Summer: To Do, To Do Less, and To Avoid

What To Do in May and June Avid gardeners find lots to do during May and June as spring melts into summer.  The enjoyment of spending time outside watching things grow and listening to the birds can distract us from our spring to-do list.  But taking care of business early in the season will result in a more attractive garden and more success through the summer months ahead. The days are getting noticeably longer and warmer as the first flush...

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

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 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

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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

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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...

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

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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,...