Dr. Dwayne Estes is an inspiration to all of us who care about native plants and ecosystems and preserving biodiversity. His story is one of perseverance and passion. Check out this short documentary about his work to preserve these endangered ecosystems by forming the Southeastern Grasslands Institute. Continue reading "The Prairie Preacher"
While the time to see native azaleas blooming is long past, this article on native azalea identification is quite valuable to understand the basics of azalea identification. For further information and keys, see Flora of the Southeastern U.S. https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-key.php&taxonid=65656 Continue reading "Native Azaleas"
Wild Ones has received a lot of requests to provide information about native spring ephemerals. The video below from the Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia provides a lot of great information about spring ephemerals, their reproduction, ecosystem function and landscape uses. The ephemerals found in Northern Virginia can also be found in Alabama. Additionally, this […] Continue reading "Native Spring Ephemerals"
While not every plant in the following video is a New World native, Thomas Ranier’s work is very inspirational to those attempting to landscape in the naturalistic New Perennialist style (using mostly or exclusively native plants). I especially like the idea that we should strive to plant not what we want to plant, but what […] Continue reading "Gardening in a Post Wild World"
In the 1984 movie Ghostbusters, there’s a scene where Gozer the Gozerian tells the Ghostbustors to, “choose your destroyer.” This is actually what happens every time someone who is uninformed about ecology, botany or horticulture goes to a typical nursery or garden box store to buy plants for their garden. It turns out that the […] Continue reading "Sowing the seeds of our destruction"
This is an excellent presentation covering many native plants that are not commonly cultivated in Southeastern gardens but that should be more widely known and grown. Continue reading "Lesser-known native plants of the Southeast"
Get on the map, then get to work. We have 20 million acres of invasive species and lawn monocultures to replace with keystone native plants. Alabama is #38 on the map as of Nov 7, 2023, but let’s get to #1! Continue reading "Homegrown National Park"
The Holy Grail of naturalistic landscape design is to find a good replacement for the millions of acres of useless, energy and water-hungry non-native turf grass planted across North America. While tallgrass prairie communities have sadly been extirpated from much of North America, most people (and their neighbors) do not want 3-9 foot tall grasses […] Continue reading "Native Lawn"
We enjoyed tabling and meeting our friends in the North Alabama Native Plant society this past weekend. There was a huge turnout, a lot of enthusiasm for native plants and tons of native plants and seeds shared among the participants. We were excited to hear about new businesses starting up to support native landscaping in […] Continue reading "Successful Meetup!"
If you are just getting started with your native landscape design, Thomas Rainer will inspire you. Follow his principles to make emotionally appealing and functional landscapes. The entire presentation is fantastic, but I really like the part starting about the 26 min mark. Continue reading "Principles of Native Landscape Design"