Painted Ladies in the Garden
We haven’t seen a Monarch since last weekend, but today there were several Painted Lady butterflies fluttering around the Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia) and the various Rudbeckias.
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Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
A Bird and Pollinator Video Retrospective
Last night I included a video Judy made a couple of years ago in my post. That got me looking at other videos she had made. She had fun making these videos with her Nikon camera but then stopped, I think she may have been discouraged about getting the kind of quality (focus, etc.) that …
The Lurie Garden in August
So yesterday Judy and I went to the Lurie Garden to see how things were progressing.
Illinois is Milkweed Country
I’m proud to say that my state just adopted Milkweed (Asclepias spp.) as its official wildflower (the official state flower is the Violet).
If You Plant Just One Annual for Pollinators …
Pollinators love Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia).
The Case of the Mistakenly Labeled Lobelias
I love Cardinal Flowers (Lobelia cardinalis), but they don’t love me. Which is to say, they always die on me after a couple of years. They’re fairly finicky. They like lots of sun, lots of moisture, and bed sheets with a thread count of at least 1,800.
More Grist for the Natives versus Nativars Debate
Recently, the blog Humane Gardener published an interesting interview with Vermont ecological garden designer Annie White. For her doctoral research, White had conducted an experiment to determine whether pollinators had preferences for straight species native plants as opposed to named cultivars bred from native plants – “nativars”.
A Good Day for Butterflies
It was gorgeous on Saturday, mild and sunny. I was doing this and that in the front garden when I noticed that we had no fewer than three Monarch butterflies fluttering about. That’s the most we’ve had so far this year, though we’ve had as many as half a dozen in August and September, as …
A Plant Called … Golden Glow
So remember those two substantial-looking plants that were growing in the Driveway Border, except I had absolutely no memory of ever planting them? Well, they’re blooming now, and they turn out to be Rudbeckia laciniata, which also goes by the truly wonderful common name of Wild Golden Glow.
Iron and Purple Fuzz
I planted Prairie Ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata) all the way back in 2010, but it wasn’t until the last couple years that it started to be a real presence in the Driveway Boarder.
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