Every year, at our chapter’s plant exchange in May, we benefit from, and – I like to think – participate in, the extraordinary liberality of Nature. Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, asserts that “Nature is, above all, profligate.” Nature, in her endeavor to assure the survival of life, routinely produces an abundance of […] Continue reading "The Bounty of Nature"
This April, our Wild Ones chapter offers a spring wildflower hike at Lower Howards Creek, as we did last year. All winter long, the forest at the nature preserve has been a drab grey-brown. Then, quite suddenly, and before the trees have shown any real sign of new life, the forest floor greened up and […] Continue reading "Lower Howards Creek Nature and Heritage Preserve"
All gardens, even the most formal, take their inspiration from Nature. Plants, which are living and growing organisms, give them their form and meaning. For native plant gardeners this connection with Nature is a far more serious matter than for others. They take pride in the fact that their garden belongs to a specific place […] Continue reading "Gardens"
Lexington’s tree canopy has just received a boost that bodes well for its future. Trees Lexington!, an organization dedicated to promote the planting and care of trees in the city, conducted its second Tree Steward training program. On two Saturday mornings in November, 15 volunteers learned how to properly plant small bare root trees and […] Continue reading "Getting Urban Trees Off to a Good Start"
Trees – they enhance our urban lives in so many ways. They allow us to live with nature providing food and shelter for insects and birds. Their roots absorb and channel vast amounts of rain water that cannot penetrate the ground when it falls on roofs, patios, driveways, streets, sidewalks and parking lots. In doing […] Continue reading "Loving Trees"
In the mid-1960s Melanie VanHouten’s family purchased a 100 acre tobacco farm just outside Frankfort, Kentucky. In 2008 Melanie and her husband began creating the Josephine Sculpture Park on 20 acres of the original farm, an additional 10 acres of the original farm was added to the park in 2018. At that time, no family […] Continue reading "Land Management at Josephine Sculpture Park"
In April of 2020, just as the pandemic was sweeping our continent and the world, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington applied for a grant from our local Wild Ones chapter to install a new wildflower garden. The grant requirements were that the garden must be visible to the public and use native plants to […] Continue reading "A Grant Fulfilled and a New Public-facing Wildflower Garden in Lexington"
Everyone recognizes the iconic orange and black monarch butterfly or the black and yellow European honeybee as pollinators, but many birds, butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, wasps, reptiles and even small mammals like bats can provide pollination services as well. Over 75% of all flowering plants are pollinated by animals. It is estimated that one out […] Continue reading "Pollen"
“If you have a garden, you have a nursery” a friend of mine once said, and he was right. Anyone whose garden regularly produces an overabundance of celandine poppies, beardtongues, wild petunia, coneflowers, black-eyed susans, grey goldenrod, or aromatic aster will agree. The grasses may be even more enthusiastic self seeders, for in an intentionally […] Continue reading "Sharing the Bounty"
Until quite recently, people thought that cities are places apart from nature. Even urban gardens and parks were designed to appeal to human eyes rather than respond to the needs of birds and pollinators. Cities, so the assumption went, exist to fulfill the desires of people, and nature exists in the fields, prairies and forests […] Continue reading "Urban Nature"