why natives? butterflies are just one great reason, says andy brand

I am often asked to recommend plants for problematic garden areas during my call-in radio program or after public-speaking engagements. As a result, over the years I have developed a list of my top picks for sunny and shady gardens depending on whether the soil is dense, heavy, and clay-based, or lean, sandy, and quick-draining. Fortunately, I have experience gardening with both soil types, and so I know that each presents its own challenges and opportunities. Here are a few options for perennials, trees, and shrubs that can survive and even thrive in the trickiest soil conditions.

Parasitic plants derive their required energy and nutrition from other plants, hindering their growth. Here is a list of some Unwanted Plants that are Parasites!

You don’t have to be a Starbucks aficionado to know Americans are obsessed with coffee. They love it so much that it’s the most popular beverage in the country, with consumption being at a two-decade high, according to the National Coffee Data Trends report.

Tested by Marti Neely, FAPLD

In July 2022, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) drew attention to North America’s migrating monarchs by adding them to their ICUN Red List of Threatened Species. In the United States, the more immediate plight of other threatened and endangered species has precluded the monarchs’ inclusion on the Endangered Species List. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged that their place on this list is “warranted.” They mandated that the monarchs be reviewed annually as a potential candidate for inclusion. These incredible insects migrate 4000 miles every spring and fall and face immense dangers on this epic journey. What simple steps can you take to help monarchs as they travel past your home?

Hover flies, aka syrphid flies, are a common sight in the garden. Of the 900 or so species native to the United States, most are mistaken by many gardeners as being a bee or a wasp due to their mimicking coloration pattern of black and yellow stripes on their abdomens. But these stingless imposters are important beneficial insects in the garden that feed on the likes of aphids, thrips, immature leafhoppers, and other small, soft-bodied plant pests. They are one of the first beneficial insects to become active in the spring and get an early start on helping to suppress those early aphid populations on certain ornamentals and vegetables.

Since the book “Planting in a Post-Wild World” came out in 2015, co-authored by Claudia West with Thomas Rainer, I’ve been gradually studying their ideas and starting to have some light bulbs go off, on how to be inspired to put plants together in the ways that nature does, in layered communities.Claudia joined me on the July 17, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to about some of the practical, tactical aspects of plant community-inspired designs that we can app

What is your favorite glimpse of the American landscape, the one you could stare and stare out into? Does it include water or sky, or a sea of something else? Maybe you’ll be spending part of the holiday weekend in sight of it.

I garden because I cannot help myself.I garden because I cannot look out the window and see the shaggy bits any longer, and have to go “fix it” (as if it will ever be “fixed”).I garden because I do not know what my life would be without plants, truth be told. They speak to me at some level I can’t explain, each one in a slightly different voice.I garden because it’s the only

I spoke about some notable natives with my friend Andy Brand of Broken Arrow Nursery, with whom I often hosting half-day workshops in my Hudson Valley, New York, garden, when we focus on upping the beneficial wildlife quotient in your own backyard with better plants and better practices. Andy has been one of the experts I’ve pestered for ideas as I’ve been doing that in my own garden in recent years to good effect.Andy is manager of Connecticut-based Broken Arrow, and he’s a serious amateur naturalist, and founder of the Connecticut state butterfly association. (That’s a photo by Andy of a red-banded hairstreak on a Clethra blossom, top of page.) Learn where many familia

Andy is nursery manager of Broken Arrow in Hamden CT, a destination nursery with an extensive retail operation plus a giant mail-order catalog of unusual things. His 25-year-old personal Epimedium collection includes more than 150 kinds, with other shade treasures such as Solomon’s seal, or Polygonatum, and some lookalikes also on his radar.Broken Arrow, where he has worked for 25 years, is known for unusual things: “Especially if it’s variegated, dwarf, or has contorted branches, or there’s something that’s not quite looking right about the plant”–in the very best way, of course–Andy says you’ll find it there. Plants with an irresistible twist

“Just as a computer comes with certain pre-installed programs, I was born with a fully functional 7.0 horticultural operating system…I wasn’t very popular in high school, where an interest in plants was not something for a guy to admit in public.”Rosalind Creasy, author and edible landscaping guru:“I was in charge of finding the cutworms curled around [my father’s] tomato plants. With every cutworm I found, he would whoop and holler; I felt like I had saved the family from starvation.”Penelope Hobhouse, author and National Trust gardener:“Gardening is not about instant gratification. It is a process—from seedling to flower (a matter of a few weeks) and from small rooted cutting to a useful shrub (often a few years). This whole process, rather than the ultimate product, seems to me half the joy of gardening.”Ken Druse, author and photographer:“Why do I garden? Am I crazy? I don’t