Category: Conservation

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...

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

 by Elizabeth McCoy

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

 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...

Carbon Garden / Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Conservation / Evergreen Shrubs / Food Forest / Foraging / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Larval Host Plants / Native Trees

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Yaupon, A Native American Tea

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet v. Q2 1599     What is in a name?  How does naming a thing affect its destiny and how later generations will view it?  The story of how a popular native holly came by its name, and how that name destroyed a promising Colonial American industry, demonstrates that names have incredible power to shape the future....

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...

Beneficial Insects / Bulb Gardening / Carbon Garden / Conservation / Container Gardens / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Geophytes / Heirloom plants / Poisonous Plants / Soil Conservation / Spring / Wildlife Gardening / Winter Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Why Bother With Bulbs?

  Bins of papery brown bulbs appear in every garden center and big box store right after the back-to-school displays disappear for another autumn.  I love to study the photos of bright spring flowers on the bins, bags, and boxes of bulbs. They invite the ultimate impulse purchase.  “Where to plant them?” you may wonder.  No matter, you’ll find a spot. As trees turn gold and scarlet, we feel the chill in the air, and know that the long summer...

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

 by Elizabeth McCoy

A Tea Story: Past and Future

The Long Story of Tea in America Have you ever wondered where your tea comes from?  Tea is one of those everyday things that we can always find at the grocery or convenience store.  You may remember that tea was imported to Boston in the Colonial era.  Maybe you also remember the story of how colonists, dressed as Native Americans, dumped the British East India Company’s cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor in December 1773 to protest unfairly high...

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...

Carbon Garden / Compost / Conservation / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Resource Protection / Soil Conservation / Weeds / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle: Coffee Grounds

  Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium and More That pile of wet grounds left from your fresh pot of coffee contains nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and iron. Does that list of ingredients sound familiar? You may recognize this nutrient list from the last bag of fertilizer you read. Brewed coffee grounds, the dried and ground remains of the coffee bean, which is a seed, can be repurposed to enrich compost and improve soils. Grounds may contain up to 10% nitrogen, intended...

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...