Our once shady front yard was left a bright expanse of coarse wood chips and mangled leaves after the arborists pulled out their heavy equipment and left, that hot summer afternoon almost a dozen years ago. A freak summer thunderstorm had harbored a waterspout or small tornado when it blew in from College Creek a few days before. Our first clue that something was wrong had been seeing the underside of a muddy root ball rising 8 feet or...
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...
The former Colonial Williamsburg Garden Historian, Wesley Greene, had a discussion with Scott Hemler, Colonial Williamsburg’s nurseryman this year in August, about the origin of our famous Compton Oak. In this exchange, Greene raised questions about the “legend” of this tree and how it came to be planted on Nicholson Street in historic Williamsburg. So, at Green’s suggestion, I began an investigation to see if the Archives at the Rockefeller Library could provide any additional information about the time...
Container gardening is a great way to garden if you have limited space. Have you ever considered growing native plants in your containers? And what might be even better than this, you ask? Why container gardening with native keystone perennials, of course! Why Keystone Plants? Keystone plants are the “powerhouses” of native plants. While all native plants are beneficial, keystone plants are the linchpins for entire ecosystems, providing crucial resources for the greatest number of insect species. These keystone plants...
Cardinals nest in a large evergreen shrub beside my kitchen window. Though the shrub, Ligustrum, is frowned upon by many contemporary gardeners as invasive, the birds don’t know that. They delight in its abundant berries and the insects that visit year-round. We delight in watching the birds come and go, even as they peer in the windows at us. We amuse one another. Cardinals, titmice and other birds also perch in the crape myrtle tree a little further out...
What do you consider when choosing plants for your home and yard? We all have a checklist of criteria in the back of our minds. Our criteria are very personal to our own needs and situation. You may not purchase and plant as many plants as I do each year, but I’m sure that you enjoy the choosing and the planting just as much. We gardeners have been encouraged to plant more native plants for quite a...
What Are Indigenous Trees? Indigenous trees are those native species that have grown in our area since before European colonization. They are uniquely suited to our climate. They support our indigenous wildlife and make our landscape unique. Trees produced from long generations of the same species, that have all grown in our immediate area, are considered indigenous. A tree ordered from a mail-order nursery, even of the same species, was likely grown from seed, or a cutting, indigenous to...
A second annual Earth Day and Arbor Day celebration on Saturday, April 23, at 10:30 AM will include the planting of two wild-type American chestnut seedling trees at Freedom Park in James City County, Virginia. The celebration results from a collaboration between the Clean County Commission, and volunteers at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden and Freedom Park Arboretum, with support from the Freedom Park staff. One tree will be planted in the Pine-Hardwoods section of the Garden, and the other will...