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Plant This Not That: Native Groundcover Edition
Golden Ragwort, image © Westside Nature Preserve After a lecture I gave a few months ago on native plants for Baltimore, one of attendees wondered on his blog about sustainable urban groundcovers. I’ve...
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Plant This, Not That: The Book
Many of the writers on this blog have been contributing to a series of posts called “Plant This, Not That“. In each case, we highlight a couple of plants that are invasive and/or overused and then...
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Hardscapes and Their Role in the Native Garden
A DG path crosses a dry creek bed in Corona. When people think of creating a native garden the first thing that typically comes to mind is plant material. Images of specific varieties pop up in the...
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Native Sedges: Why You Should Carex!
This local ecotype Carex glaucodea is tidy groundcover, taking the place formerly occupied by liriope. If a group of native plants can be considered as simultaneously obscure and baffling, it would...
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Edible Native Plants from the Wildlife Garden
Native blueberries are delicious and nutritious for wildlife and people. Image courtesy American Beauties Native Plants. This upcoming weekend, our native plant nursery will be a vendor at the 25th...
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Plant Profile: Trees of Chino Hills State Park
Cool shade of the southern Oak Woodland In my prior post I wrote about the importance of familiarizing ourselves with the flora and fauna of our local native ecosystems. With regard to our native...
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Water Conservation Equals Energy Conservation!
To reach southern California, water must travel long distances through complex delivery systems. Most Californians understand that swelling populations in the southwest are and will continue to outpace...
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A Bestiary: Part Eleven ~ Wild Turkey
As crisp autumn air sweeps trees free of leaves, that float and flutter like bright butterflies twirling and falling into heaps of leafy carpeting . . . ’A Bestiary . . . Tales from a Wildlife...
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The Maple, the Sumac and the Honeysuckle
A grand old sugar maple stood beside the road at the edge of the hayfield across from my house. By the time I moved to the neighborhood, this tree was no beauty: it had already lost its leader, and...
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Why Words Matter: ‘Native’ and ‘Nature’
Prairie sage (Artemisia ludoviciana) collects snow off my bedroom patio during a rare storm this winter. Winter’s long days and short nights, when my garden is resting, are my contemplative time....
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Praying Mantises. Which are the Good Ones?
Chinese mantis, Tenodera sinensis, preying on a hummingbird© Jeanne Scott-Zumwalt Last month I wrote about lady beetles, also called ladybugs, and discussed some of the problems with buying them as...
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A Slithering I Went, In Search of Critters Calling Our Sunflower Patch “Habitat”
Cozy Cottage’s Sidewalk Sunflower Patch Nearly two months now and I am curious of just who lives in the forest of sunflower plant stalks and on the thick groundcover/mulch below it. As mentioned in...
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Plant This, Not That: The Book
Many of the writers on this blog have been contributing to a series of posts called “Plant This, Not That“. In each case, we highlight a couple of plants that are invasive and/or overused and then...
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Red Cone Gall Wasps and Their Galls
Red Cone Gall Wasp galls on an oak leaf.© jillmotts, via Electric Orchids What are those? How strange! Such was my reaction when I was strolling through a California patio garden. Just above my...
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Installing A Wildlife Habitat Underground
I have begun a new wildlife habitat in our garden, called Bark Beetle Bistro. A very large oak tree cracked, split, and partially fell into a drainage ditch about two blocks from our home. I have...
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Over-Wintering Insects in Insulating Leaf Pile
Young garter snake slithers behind the Earthworm Box.The Earthworm Box was installed on a stack of slate with spacers to create shelter for wildlife. Wow, it’s cold this week, in mid December. Lucky...
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The Ethics of Native Plant Gardening
How I view my garden shifted when plants matured and I noticed what was using them: what was gathering nectar and pollen, what was eating leaves, what was predating what. I had to unlearn decades of...
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