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"
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"
One Colorado Newbie’s Experience Article and Photos by Karen Vanderwall This is the first in a series of articles focusing on the experiences of members creating a native garden from the beginning. When we first moved to Fort Collins three years ago, we came with the knowledge that water was a precious resource here. We […] Continue reading "Starting a Native Garden from Scratch"
Question: Is there a list of Colorado keystone species? And, what do you think of the concept of Keystone species? Many organizations have developed lists of keystone species for Colorado and the wider region. Perhaps one of the most thorough (and most flexible, because it is focused on the genus level) is from the National Wildlife […] Continue reading "Ask CSU Extension Anything: Colorado Keystone Species"
By Jonathan Sciarcon* A fellow Wild Ones Front Range Board member asked me to write an article for this month’s newsletter on “damn yellow composites” with the request that I make it funny. While I appreciate her belief that I can write comedically, the truth is that I was not even aware of the term […] Continue reading "Learn to Love Yellow Composites"
By Jan Midgley In dry lands with few woody plants, grasses are the foundation of the landscape both functionally and aesthetically. But why should we include them in public and private designed landscapes? The small, wind-pollinated flowers are not as showy as the flowers of forbs (flowering herbaceous plants that are not a graminoid – […] Continue reading "Grasses are the Foundation"
Asclepias tuberosa By Karen Vanderwall Most gardeners and many lovers of the outdoors are familiar with milkweeds. Showy milkweed, our most common native here in Colorado, is tall with clusters of pink flowers. Or perhaps you’ve noticed the orange flowers of the less common more compact milkweed, the native butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa. Most milkweeds […] Continue reading "Plant Spotlight: Butterfly Weed"
By Deborah Lebow Aal, with help from Robert Greer, Jan Midgley and Jonathan Sciarcon This is a revised version of our most popular toolkit entry. Gardening in the shade with native plants requires quite a bit of creativity on the Front Range of Colorado. We did not have many native trees here on the plains, […] Continue reading "Colorado Native Plants that Tolerate Shade"
By Paul Alaback and Kristine Johnson Why Use Multi-Stemmed Trees? When we think of creating a native garden or landscape in the semi-arid West, we often conjure up an image of a dry prairie with many wildflowers and grasses, all adapted to hot dry conditions. While some places were historically prairie, all around Colorado we […] Continue reading "Multi-Stem Native Trees and Large Shrubs for Colorado Landscapes"
By Karen Vanderwall This month we are featuring the Colorado native: New Mexican Privet. Upon first learning of this shrub, I envisioned a privet – a dense, tough shrub trimmed into a hedge for a privacy screen. Well as in many cases, and this one is a good example, a plant’s common name can be […] Continue reading "Plant Spotlight: New Mexican Privet, Forestiera pubescens"