Accent on Natural Landscaping Inc

Natural Landscaping

February 13, 2016

Do you have a passion for native plants and natural landscaping? Do you wish you knew more about native plants and biodiversity? If so, I invite you to join this blog and learn about native plants, natural landscaping and biodiversity a little at a time.

As Executive Director of Wild Ones for 17 years, one of the things I enjoyed the most was to share with members and others the new and interesting information I learned about things related to the Wild Ones mission. So now as I continue on with my next life adventure, [Read more…]

How Trees Talk to Each Other Update

September 19, 2018

Reference my previous post on How Trees Talk to Each Other. National Geographic just released a short film on this very subject. If you haven’t already seen it, click on How Trees Secretly Talk to Each Other in the Forest.

Prehistoric Insects

September 17, 2018

Ten-spot Dragonfly (*Libellula pulchella*), also known as Twelve-spotted Skimmer, with native Eastern Daisy Fleabane (*Erigeron annuus*). Fleabane is found in all but 7 states. It is an annual and used by a variety of insects. Photo by Donna VanBuecken.

I was surprised to learn during prehistoric times, insects were substantially bigger than they are now. It appears they declined in size as the atmosphere declined in oxygen level.

The change, as you might expect, was gradual mimicing the gradual evolution in birds, which as you might also expect, contributed to their demise through predation.

I wonder if this means plants were bigger millions of years ago as well?

See Science Magazine’s Ancient insect graveyards reveal an explosion in bug diversity 237 million years ago for more information.

The idea for this post came from EarthSky’s Why were prehistoric insects so big? There’s a great poster associated with this article.

Dancing Feet

September 14, 2018

I grew up in a household filled with dance music. My parents loved to dance and if they couldn’t find a dance to go to somewhere on the weekend, they’d “cut the rug” right there in the kitchen. So you can imagine my delight when Teresa Hanfin brought this awesome video to my attention through her Fast Forward newsletter. To the song by Bruno Mars, “Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk.” Enjoy!

Thanks, Teresa, for helping me relive some really old, but really good memories!

P.S. It may be difficult to believe, but I believe I have seen almost all of the movies used in this mash-up.

The Importance of Deadheading

September 12, 2018

I’ve mentioned deadheading* over-zealous native plants and weeds occasionally in my past posts, but today I wanted to talk more about its importance for maintaining control not only over the look of a more formal garden, but also the biodiversity of a planting using native species. There are some native plants species which are more aggressive than others. For example, Branched Coneflower (Rudbeckia triloba), sunflowers (helianthus sp), (silphium sp) and goldenrod (Solidago sp), just to name a few, produce a lot of seed.

Summer view of the WILD Center frontyard. — 2014 summer view of a rain garden. See clump of Sweet Black-eyed Susan at center-back of the garden.

2018 view of same garden. Now the Sweet Black-eyed Susan seems to have taken over and the variety of the other plant species can barely be seen.

Perhaps the photos above can explain better than I can with my words to what I am referring. This small rain garden was planted with the intention of keeping it more formal, more like a specimen garden so visitors could see how native plants could be used in a formal setting and also to help them better identify individual native plant species.

Caretakers used to regularly deadhead most of the blossoms of the more aggressive species as they were setting seed in late summer/early fall. It appears now maintenance of the garden is not being done regularly or at least not so carefully, so some of the less aggressive species are being overtaken by the more aggressive Sweet Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia submentosa). The biodiversity of the original planting is now in jeopardy as well as the original design.

SEED FOR THE BIRDS

It is important to deadhead the more aggressive plants in your gardens to maintain the biodiversity and the design of your garden. But, if you want to save the seed from the deadheaded plants for the birds wintering over, cut the stems long enough so you can tie them up and put them out on your patio or hang from your shepherd’s hook during the winter months. Once your garden has become overwhelmed by the more aggressive species it will mean a lot of hard work to get it back to some semblance of your original design and biodiversity.

*Deadheading in this case means to cut the seed heads off the stems of plants before the seed can ripen and spread throughout the planting. Deadheading also means to remove dead flower heads from plants to encourage further blooming. And, it can also mean to cut back the stems of plants to make them come back shorter and bushier. This works well for the taller, wet mesic prairie plants especially since they tend to flop over from their heavy blooms.