By Deborah Lebow Aal This article is a bit of a book review. There is a wonderful little booklet entitled Colorado Wildscapes: Bringing Conservation Home, put out by Audubon Colorado in 2005 (maybe time for an update?). The point of the booklet is to know your Colorado Wildscape region so that you plant the right […] Continue reading "Know Your Colorado Wildscape Region"
By Deborah Lebow Aal I know your interest is in native plants, and I’ll get there, but I will presume if you are reading this, that you are also interested in ecosystem issues and maybe even what steps you can take with your landscape to combat climate change. I recently read a wonderful post by […] Continue reading "Zero-Waste Gardening"
By Deborah Lebow Aal As you will recall, we have said many times that insects are half the show. We tend to try to get rid of them, especially if they are eating your prize roses, but remember that the only reason a plant flowers is to attract pollinators, mostly insects like bees. It’s a […] Continue reading "Let’s talk about Bees"
By Cynthia Reiners Rocky Mountain penstemon, Penstemon strictus, is an attractive Colorado native perennial that meets several important objectives for a suburban native plant gardener. This species of penstemon is often commercially available, easily grown in a variety of micro-climates and ordinary soil, and visibly supports the local web of life. A less well- known […] Continue reading "Rocky Mountain penstemon: An excellent choice for a native plant garden"
By Deb Lebow Aal. Updated by Jen Smith, September 2023. No, no, not Kentucky Blue Grass! Banish that thought and that grass – definitely not native, here. Kentucky Blue Grass (referred to from now on as KBG !!), the bane of water providers in the west, is ubiquitous, and, while it serves a purpose (it […] Continue reading "Glorious Grasses Native to Colorado’s Front Range"
By Deborah Lebow Aal This is the time of year when gardeners put their feet up and happily look through catalogues, thinking about next year’s garden. Because let’s face it, every gardener’s best garden is next year. Next year, my plants will all be in the right place, just the way I want them…. It’s […] Continue reading "Why Native Plants?"
By Deborah Lebow Aal Okay, first, what is a hellstrip? It’s that strip of land in front of your house between the street and the sidewalk, so named because any living thing that thrives there has to be tough. Also known as the parking strip or public easement, the homeowner does not own it, but […] Continue reading "Landscaping your Hellstrip"
By Deborah Lebow Aal This month, we asked Front Range Wild Ones members to give us the name of their favorite Front Range Colorado native plants, and the reason(s) why. Some had difficulty naming only one, so we allowed two (and yes, sometimes three). We thought this could be interesting because everyone likes to talk […] Continue reading "Our Favorite Colorado Native Plants"
By Deborah Lebow Aal Climate change is having an affect on the plants that thrive in Colorado. And everywhere. This is disconcerting, to say the least, as we have been concentrating on incorporating native plants into Colorado’s Front Range landscapes. What do we know about what the effects will be? We do know that urban […] Continue reading "Climate Change and Native Plants"
By Deb Lebow Aal. Updated October 2023 by Jen Smith. We garden for beauty. We love to make our landscapes look nice, and that is a wonderful reason to be a gardener. But, we can balance gardening for beauty with gardening to ensure we are in harmony with the ecosystem; that we are providing a […] Continue reading "Gardening for More than Beauty | Restoring Nature and A Sense of Place"
