Category

Pollinators
Next time you visit your favorite garden center, you may want to contemplate some of these purchases:
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Ten years ago, Liz Stanley’s and her partner Lynn Gallagher’s suburban yard was a weedy, turf-grass expanse, complete with invasive buckthorn. With no backgrounds in gardening—and through trial and error—they have slowly transformed their half-acre yard in Bloomington, Minnesota (a suburb of the Twin Cities), into a lush native habitat for pollinators, birds, and other...
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Over a decade ago Daniel Schultz listened to a talk given by Doug Tallamy, the author of the book Bringing Nature Home. It turned the way he saw the natural world upside-down. “It was such a shock to learn how little wildlife habitat is left in the United States,” states Daniel.
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When a caterpillar emerges from an egg, it is minuscule and can’t travel far to find food. To aid her offspring’s survival, the female butterfly (or moth) deposits her eggs on the food source her newborn caterpillars require so they can eat as soon as they emerge. The specific plant (or plants) a particular caterpillar...
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Forty-two ways to green your neighborhood: just plant a new tree Lee, sweep up the salt Walt, pick up your dog’s poo Lu, and set yourself free.
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A few summers ago, the Kraus family noticed a steady increase in monarch butterflies visiting their backyard native wildflower garden. One day after an overnight rainfall, Paula Kraus was stunned to see the black walnut tree in her family’s backyard overflowing with monarch butterflies sunning their wings.
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About 15 years ago, MaryJo and Charlie Skemp started noticing unusual activity in a hosta planting that runs along the back side of their home. Beginning each spring, the garden would become an energy-filled flurry of what appeared to be bees, or perhaps wasps or hornets, hurriedly flying in and out of anthill-like holes in...
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Next time you visit your favorite garden center, you may want to contemplate some of these purchases:
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It’s hard for many gardeners to resist “cleaning up” their gardens in the fall or spring. But many moths and butterflies overwinter as caterpillars, pupae, and even adults in the soil surface, leaf litter, dead plants, twigs, and other hiding places in the garden. Other insects such as native bees, beetles, and more, need “messy”...
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Pictures tell most of this story. Property owners in an east suburb carved out a section of their property and transformed it into a wildlife haven in just a year. Milkweed that had always grown on the property were supplemented with a variety of Minnesota native plants. The following season, the planting was bursting with...
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