Covering Ground
The Cut That Tames Milkweed and other Tall Plants
Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) elicits a lot of reactions from people.
On one hand, it is an essential host plant for monarch butterflies, a valuable nectar source for bees and other pollinators, and an abundant bloomer in June and July. It is also remarkably easy to grow.
Native Plants Blossom March to November: A List
Who'd have thought the growing season, and pollinator season, of southern New England starts in late February? But it does.
First, there's that funky swamp-life called skunk cabbage. The odiferous blossoms smell mighty good to particular flies and beetles. Those flies offer something to the skunk cabbage, too: pollination.
Native groundcovers, anyone?
This list of native groundcovers may help you with plant selections this spring.. My thanks go to the 25 people who named their favorites in my August 2025 newsletter survey. (Join the newsletter here.) Respondents live in states from New Jersey to Maine.
Got Invasive Plants? Who Are You Gonna' Call?
Warm weather and above-average rainfall made encouraged lush plant life early in 2024. Unfortunately, too many of those healthy plants were uninvited, unwanted, non-native invasive plants.
Book Review: Playing God in the Meadow, How I Learned to Admire My Weeds
Book by Martha Leb Molnar
Bright Leaf Press/University of Massachusetts Press, 2022
Birds, Nights, and Lights
It's May 1st as I write this. Birds are flying north again, as they have for millennia.
Put Invasive Plants on a Starvation Diet This Year
It's March, and I'm back to the annual ritual of cutting woody invasive plants to the ground. March, April, and May are "prime time" for a technique called carbohydrate starvation (a.k.a. root depletion). My top target is Japanese barberry at a local state forest where I volunteer. Other bad actors include burning bush, privet, autumn olive, and multiflora rose.
While Pundits Ponder the Value of Trees, the Trees Quietly Do Their Important Work
When my kids were little, they delighted in catching my attention by surprise, and then shouting, “Made you look!”
Perhaps billionaire Bill Gates was playing that game at a September 2023 conference when he called tree planting for carbon capture “complete nonsense.” He also said, “I don’t plant trees,” at a Climate Forward event held by the New York Times.
What's to Love About Public Gardens? Start With the Colors.
If you're ready to indulge in botanical eye candy, take a road trip to a public garden. Below, learn about five in the eastern Connecticut shoreline area. Don't forget to take a look at the much longer list of ideas at the end of this post.
Is Your Yard Part of the Homegrown National Park?
Millions of people flock to the national parks each summer, seeking magnificent scenery and interesting history. But what if, instead, millions of people discovered the parklike nature of their own backyards and community open spaces?