Leaves float on every strong breeze, covering our walks and driveway just hours after we last cleaned them. The many different species of trees in our community almost guarantee that we will have a long season of managing fallen leaves and pine tags. Leaves may begin to fall in August or September, particularly when the weather is dry. And some trees hold onto their leaves until the following spring. So cleaning up fallen leaves is more of an ongoing...
Pawpaw Flowers Pollination Challenges Pawpaw flowers are a dull red to purple color which resembles rotting meat, and they have a putrid odor to attract the flies and beetles that pollinate them , much like native skunk cabbage and jack-in-the pulpit. Pawpaw’s small flowers have six petals and are rarely larger than a half-dollar. These are ‘perfect’ flowers, having both male, pollen bearing stamens and a female pistil, whose base will develop into the fruit after about five to...
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...
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. ...
The Fern Solution Once upon a time, I considered ferns the magical solution to most of my gardening challenges. Deep dry shade? Plant some Polystichum, Christmas ferns. Soggy shade? Plant some cinnamon or ostrich ferns. A wet meadow in partial sun? Marsh ferns, Thelypteris, will thrive. Winter color in part sun? Plant some Dryopteris ‘Autumn Brilliance’ ferns. Deer? Bunnies? No worries, grazers normally ignore the ferns, and especially avoid the Cyrtomium holly fern species. Slopes with too much erosion? ...
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...
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...
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...
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:” William Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Magical Thyme If you are wanting to conjure a bit of magic in your...
“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...