By Deborah Lebow Aal* I bet you’ve made some design mistakes with your native plants. I certainly have. I’ve put a red flower next to another clashing red flower, a tall flower in front of a short, and much worse. So silly. So, I asked a few very active Wild Ones Front Range Chapter folks […] Continue reading "Favorite Native Plant Combinations"
Linum lewisii By Karen Vanderwall With their many electric periwinkle blue flowers, blooming prolifically from late spring through summer, blue flax (Linum lewisii) is a native garden must have. Blue flexor Lewis flax can be described as dainty or airy or even delicate; its stems coming together into a vase shape with spaced small narrow […] Continue reading "Plant Stories: Blue Flax"
The absolute key to getting the public (including our spouses, municipalities, and skeptical neighbors) to accept and appreciate ecological landscaping by Kenton Seth Colleagues and mentors have all made passing comments—usually in the parking lot after a breakfast meetup, or later at night after a few glasses of wine—that there is a trick to making landscape designs […] Continue reading "Cues To Care"
By Kristine Johnson Much as we experience the seasonal rhythms of weather during the calendar year, there are similar patterns in our propagation activity within Wild Ones Front Range. We track day length, temperature, precipitation and plant life-cycle timing. It can be helpful to explicitly name and describe the activities in our propagation season to […] Continue reading "The Propagation Season"
By Deborah Lebow Aal Yes, I am going to write about the pounds you put on this winter (wait, did we have winter?). No, I am not. Winterfat, Ceratoides lanata or Krascheninnikovia lanata, also known as white sage, lamb’s tail, and sweet or winter sage, is an underused native plant in Colorado gardens. I recently […] Continue reading "Plant Spotlight: Winterfat"
Review by Lani Rush How many stars can you see in your garden? Have you ever sat outside at dusk to watch night blooming flowers? These are just some of the questions on my mind for our members after finishing Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark by Leigh […] Continue reading "Book Review: Night Magic"
By Kristine Johnson I’ve written a series of articles for Wild Ones Front Range on precipitation harvesting, and I’ve recently interviewed Brad Lancaster, Jace Lankow and Luis Salgado–all water harvesting practitioners in Tucson, Arizona–for insights into the connections between native plant gardening and rain gardening. Look for that article in the national Wild Ones Journal […] Continue reading "Connecting Native Plant Gardening and Rain Gardening"
By Richard Phillips Quercis gambellii, the Gambel Oak (also known as Gambel’s Oak) was described and named by the famous English/American naturalist Thomas Nuttall in 1848. He named the specimen after its collector, William Gambel, who found it in 1840 near Santa Fe, NM when he was only 19 years old, during a pioneering trip […] Continue reading "Plant Spotlight: Gambel Oak"
By Deborah Lebow Aal Wild Ones isn’t only about native plants. Yes, plant choice is critical, but your overall gardening techniques and what you do before, during and after the planting of these native plants can have an equally large impact on your home ecosystem. So, here are our top ten tips for caring for […] Continue reading "Ecological Gardening Best Principles"
Review by Karen Vanderwall Written by Doug Tallamy in 2001, The Nature of Oaks–his homage to oaks (genus Quercus)–is a pleasure to read from cover to cover. Although I had known of the book, I assumed the book would not be very relevant to me as I now live and garden in an area where […] Continue reading "Book Review: The Nature of Oaks"