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These businesses are good sources of native plants and other items of interest to habitat gardeners.
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Featured Article
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Be a good host Provide host plants for butterflies. Butterflies need particular plants to raise their young. For example, milkweed is the host plant for monarch butterflies.
Here are some host plants for other CNY butterflies:
Black Swallowtail parsley, dill, fennel, carrot
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail cottonwood, tulip tree, wild black cherry
Great Spangled Fritillary
violets
Baltimore Checkerspot
chelone (turtlehead)
Question Mark
hops, nettles, elms, hackberries
Eastern Comma nettles, elms, hops
Mourning Cloak willows, cottonwoods, elms, birches, hackberries
Red Admiral nettles, false nettles
American Lady pussytoes, pearly everlasting
White Admiral birch, poplar, willows
Tawny Emperor hackberry
Cecropia moth cherry, plum, apple, elderberry, box elder, maple, birch, willow |
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What action, if any, do you want your members to take? Add a "Find out more" link to additional information that you may have hosted on your website
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Upcoming HGCNY Programs and Events
Our meetings are free and open to the public. Join us!
Our regular season programs are enjoyable and informative, but one of the best ways
to learn about habitat gardening is to see them! We offer a number of
opportunities for this. First, you can attend our official tours - one
at a home, one at the zoo's habitat garden, and one at a natural area
(Clark Reservation State Park) that features both native and,
unfortunately, invasive plants. Second, you can arrange with some of
our HGCNYers to tour their gardens at a mutually agreeable time. Third, Janet will offer scheduled tour times of her garden throughout the
summer. Come to as many of these tours as you'd like. Finally, if you'd
like to hear presentations about habitat gardening, visit us at the
State Fair on Friday, Aug. 28 and Saturday Aug. 29. Check dates, times, locations and other details on our meetings and events webpage ... A black swallowtail butterfly laying eggs on dill, one of its larval host plants. Photo taken in a local habitat garden. |
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Be wary of Asian longhorned beetle in CNY
 Photo from Mass. Natural Resources Collaborations
Forestry officials are hoping the public can help them spot this
destructive beetle before it makes a home here in
upstate New York.
Right now, the insect is tearing its way through parts of Massachusetts, where it's killed thousands of trees.
These beetles usually start at the top of the trees and work their way
down, eating their way through. They like hardwoods, but they
particularly love maple trees.
If a tree becomes infected, it needs to be cut down and chipped or burned to get rid of the
insects. In Worcester, Massachusetts, they've already lost over 21,000
trees since last August.
If you spot what you think is an Asian longhorned beetle, bring it
to the Cornell Cooperative Extension in your county, or even to SUNY
ESF.
Learn more, including a slide show and video ...
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Free plants
You may be content having some individual accent plants - perhaps a dramatic black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) in a shady area or a native honeysuckle vine (Lonicera sempervirens). But sometimes a single individual of a plant species just doesn't do it. One bloodroot plant? Some plants are just meant to be in masses. But how can anyone afford to purchase enough plants at $5-$7 a plant to cover a whole area?
You could purchase one and wait for it to spread, or diligently divide it every year, but often a better solution is to grow plants from seed. For some plants, this is simple. But these are often the plants that are probably already volunteering all over with no help from you.
Even though all plants obviously reproduce in the wild without our help, in the less natural conditions of a garden setting, they may need a little intentional effort on your part. And you may want to have more plants of one species than might occur in the wild - when you're using them as a ground cover, for example.
To be successful, you need to learn a little about the conditions necessary for germination and growth. (Think back to our experience described in a previous newsletter of the dramatic difference in results when swamp milkweed seeds were or were not cold stratified!)
Here's some advice from White Oak Nursery on two desirable plants - bloodroot and wild ginger - that are currently producing ripe seeds. The website discusses using native plant seeds to restore plant communities followed by links to starting other species from seed. The William Cullina books (available at OCPL) also offer advice on how to propagate a variety of native plants.
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UPDATE 2: A partial deer solution
In our last two issues, we've discussed a tip from an internet blog indicating that dribbling a path of human urine seems to deter deer. We've received more feedback that this trick is effectively protecting her plants:
"I'm
also 'discreetly dribbling' around my neighbor's front yard .... She and I chuckle about this easy and no-cost organic
solution. I have tried so many products, even a motion-sensitive
hose attachment painted with a scary monster face ($35) which succeeded
only in soaking me and my two cats."
So far, so good ... for our home landscapes. But what about natural areas? The Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve website discusses the effects of deer on native plants in the wild:
White-tailed deer over-browsing
is putting pressure on our already stressed native plants.
More than 20 species of threatened and endangered wildflowers
are being further decimated by deer. Many woodlands now have
what is called a "browse line", caused by deer eating everything
from the ground to about 4 feet up. Deer are destroying the
shrub layer of our woodlands, where many birds nest. In places
where there are more than 20 deer per square mile, songbird
populations have declined. The deer eat seedling trees, leaving
no possibility for forest regeneration once today's mature
trees are gone. Forests that are over-browsed by deer are
more susceptible to invasion from non-native invasive plant
species, which deer do not readily eat.
Add the problems of often fatal deer-vehicle collisions and disease caused by deer ticks, and this is clearly a problem our society will have to address in the near future. There are no easy answers. |
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Community service (and fun!)
The Rosamond Gifford Zoo's habitat garden is one of the largest habitat gardens in our area. It provides more habitat every year as the plantings mature and has elicited many favorable comments. But this doesn't happen by accident. A group of volunteers has worked each summer to keep it in tip-top shape for zoo visitors.
The volunteers usually work on Thursday evenings from 5:00 to about 7:00. If you'd like to participate, contact Kate Woodle before you come since they don't work every Thursday. You can either call 435-8511 ext. 134 or email Kate. |
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