Spring is coming, Honest!

Now that February is behind us here in the Northeast we have begun the countdown to when Spring truly arrives. The official start of Spring this year is March 20th. This is a time when we all start looking for the signs that the season is here. This year we have so much snow and ice it will be a good bet as to when we will really start to see and feel Spring.

I recently read a book borrowed from a friend that I enjoyed so much that I must mention it here.  Before you start getting ready to make your lawn the blue prize of the neighborhood this year, I ask you to consider some of the things this books author has written about. The numbers I'm about to clue you into were provided by author Douglas W. Tallamy in his book Bringing Nature Home. In the United States there are over 40 million acres of lawn and we spend 45 billion dollars on caring for it. Did you know that 1 hour of lawn mowing produces the same amount of pollution as 650 miles of driving? How about the price of gas these days, did you know that yearly 800 million gallons of gas is consumed by lawn mowers?

Bringing Nature Home is a great and easy read. It is a discussion on what can be done by all of us to sustain wildlife with native plants. Now don't go thinking you can not contribute, you can. Whether you have property that provides a place to plant or not, you live in a community, communities have schools, public spaces, private business and corporations have parking areas, all of these can be landscaped with plantings that invite and sustain a wildlife environment. Wildlife, what is that? If you are thinking bears, deers, wolves and other such animals, think again. A point made by Mr. Tallamy at a recent presentation I attended at New England Grows was his observation that once native sustaining plants were placed in the landscape, birds native to the area were noticed returning and many of the huge population of non-native birds moved on to other areas. The book discusses this example very well.

Want to know what all the hoopla is about invasive plants? There are documented examples and photos supporting them in this book. Some 'invasives' perhaps have good traits for a one time fix, but, over time they become out of control and harmful to the natural environment, next time you drive along the highway or an area that was disturbed during construction and left to its own instead of re-landscaping properly, take note of the invasives that have blanketed the native trees, you'll see that trees are dead or dying from vines that have deprived it of sunlight necessary to sustain life or perhaps it has broken off from the weight of vine cover during months of snow and ice here in the Northeast.

I'm a gardener, and often when I come upon insects in the landscape I'm not sure what kind it is, is it a good insect? is it a bad insect? The images and descriptions in this book are a prime reason I will have keep this book handy for referral. I've always known that a rule of thumb is that is you see an insect in large numbers you probably should know what it is, its possible there is an imbalance in the garden when this happens, it could be ok or not. After reading this book it may be that you simply need to introduce a few native plantings to provide the balance that nature needs to do its job. I enjoyed learning about oh so many insects and cannot wait to see how many I will hopefully be able to identify this year. We have lost some beautiful and worthy insects due to loss of habitat, did you know many insects only feed on certain types of plants? The Royal Walnut Moth is the largest most beautiful Lepidoptera in North America, says Tallamy. It is now extinct in New England, scientists say from light pollution. The poor thing would literally die from exhaustion from attraction to man-made light.

As a designer I've always supported keeping natives in the design process. Knowing what a native plants purpose is enhances the overall effect of the landscape both for the customer and nature. It certainly does not have to be an 'all or nothing' native planting design, but care should be taken on what mix of natives and non-natives are expected to co-exist with each other. There is some discussion on this topic as well in the section 'What Should I Plant'. Basically the message is simple,  native plantings should continue throughout a neighborhood to provide a thread of the natural environment that was there before its interruption. If you think about protected areas, such as wetlands and many conservation lands, this is the rule, developers are required to provide a list of what is intended to be planted near these areas, and for good reason, not just to keep invasives out but to maintain the sustainable nature of the space that was there to begin with.

With that I'll close with the following statement from the author, he says:
our gardens need native plants to support a diverse and balanced food web essential to all sustainable ecosystems

 

for a look inside the book visit the link below...enjoy!
Bringing Nature Home

Keep Your Eye on the Cone!

Cones, Cones, Beautiful and Lots of Cones Everywhere!

I had the pleasure of visiting the White Mountains earlier this month and hiked Mt. Osceola with some friends. It was a glorious day, the rains had stopped and the sun shone brightly. We enjoyed cool temps along the trail and an outstanding view at the summit. Check out the photos taken on our hike and enjoy the exquisite color of these cones! The summit was so full of them one had to force the eye to look beyond at the sites of the other mountain tops in view.

As many of you are noticing the conifer cones this year are quite abundant. You can see them at the tops of the trees from a distance, pulling the upper branches down into an umbrella like arch. The cones for many conifers actually take more than a year to reach their mature size, did you know that?

The red squirrels are busy trying to harvest the cones in the trees that surround my property. It sounded at first like someone either was hitting a slew of homers that fell the hardball in our yard or maybe they were throwing stones. We of course went out to 'check out' what the heck was going on. And thunk, thunk, then thunk thunk, thunk thunk thunk we heard them falling.

No it wasn't the wind, the air was still, so what was it causing them to drop? There are too many on the tree my husband said, I disagreed, I knew all too well what those little four legged furry tooth sawing, gnawing creatures were up to. Sure enough I found em, Red Squirrels, up at the top of the 50' or higher white pine, harvesting the crop! And below, it was 'bombs away'. The ground littered with fresh new cones not yet ready to fall. All nice and thin and green and fresh pine aroma in the air. Alongside of these perfect cones were the cartoonish looking skeletized cone, nothing left but a long thin post with a pointed top and rounded bottom.

So, keep your eye on the cones! For a couple of reasons, they just may fall on your head if you have a busy critter like we do in the neighborhood, and because they just look so beautiful hanging there in large clusters like I don't ever recall seeing before. Perhaps I just never noticed because they didn't get harvested by nature until later in the season when they may have lost a few on their own, or maybe I was just always busier that I am these days to have looked up enough to catch such a site.

I'm grateful this year for whatever the reason we have such a grand display of cones.
I'm also grateful that I'm able to enjoy and experience the journey to the summit of a mountain.
Nature is the most perfect designer of the landscape. I am most inspired by the plans that nature creates all by itself. Thank you Planet Earth for allowing us to join you for the view!





The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. ~Author Unknown