Ecologist helping North American growers use their yards to help fight the climate crisis 🌻
The biggest thing that helped my yard 🍃
Hi friend,When I started my eco-garden, my yard was absolutely overtaken by invasive plants. English ivy, burdock, wintercreeper, Amur honeysuckle, rose of Sharon, ground ivy, and garlic mustard just to name a few. And the first step toward getting rid of the invasive species and letting in volunteer native plants is knowing what’s growing. It’s common for gardeners to just broadly pull “weeds” without really knowing what they’re pulling. Then you end up accidentally killing free native plants that will grow well in your yard. And you might even leave something that’s invasive because you like how it looks and don’t know better. Once I was confident in identifying the plants in my yard, it got a lot easier to target what needed to go and what was welcome to stay.Now my backyard is almost entirely volunteer native plants - meaning I didn’t buy them or plant them! They showed up on their own and they support so many different species of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Volunteer black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) in my yard - native to eastern & central North America Need help learning how to ID plants and whether they’re native, foreign, or invasive?Check out this free workshop I made!
P.S. If you’re struggling with how to get rid of invasive plants without herbicides, check out my online course Natural Solutions to Invasive Plants here!
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Native Yardening
Ecologist helping North American growers use their yards to help fight the climate crisis 🌻
Hi friend, Something I hear a lot from people when I’m discussing invasive plants is, “But my parent/grandparent/sibling/friend, etc. gave me this plant as a gift, and that person has since passed away. It has sentimental value to me, and I don’t want to get rid of it.” Interestingly, this seems to happen a lot with butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), a very harmful but popular invasive species across North America. Perhaps it’s bad luck to gift someone this invasive shrub 😉 (just...
Hi friend, We've all heard that monarch butterfly populations are declining. But what should we do (and not do) to help them? The way we protect monarch butterflies is by restoring their wild habitat, avoiding insecticides, and planting native. When humans try to further interfere with nature by captive rearing monarchs or keeping caterpillars away from predators, it does more harm than good to the overall population. It’s easy to think, “Well, monarch populations are decreasing, so the...
Hi friend, Seeing butterflies always makes my day/week/life better. They're such a wonderful reminder of nature's beauty and the importance of conserving it. I looked out my front window a couple days ago while doing my morning routine of giving the dogs and cats their breakfast, and saw two swallowtails in my native garden! Of course, I had to run outside to get photos 😅📸 They're dark morph eastern tiger swallowtails (Papilio glaucus). Most butterflies of this species are primarily yellow...