Wild Ones LogoHabitat Gardening
in Central New York
    Issue #46 - February 20, 2011  
In This Issue
Native Plants for Native Birds book available
Plant sale - Deadline Feb 28
Write to Gov. Cuomo to declare Pollinator Week
April 2 Workshop with Carolyn Summers
Update on monarchs
Bee ready to help pollinators

Native Plants for
Native Birds: A Guide for Planting for Birds In and Around Ithaca

Native Plants for Native Birds
A book tailor-made for us habitat gardeners in CNY!

This book has nice articles on perennials, grasses, vines, groundcovers, shrubs, and trees.
 
It's available at Wild Birds Unlimited in Fayetteville.

 

Onondaga County Soil and Water Conservation District Plant Sale
Serviceberry
Robin eating serviceberries (Amelanchier canadensis)
The OCSWCD has made a special effort to include native plants on their list. (SWCDs in other counties even sell invasive plants!)

 

NOTE: Douglas fir,  Colorado spruce, and rose of Sharon are NOT native here, however. 

 

The ferns being offered for sale are dug with a special license from areas that are slated for development.

 

The order form and descriptions of each item are online.

 

The items come in bundles of 10. If you would like only part of a bundle, we can group orders if enough people want certain plants.  

 

OCSWCD deadline is  

March 4.  

The HGCNY deadline is Feb. 28. Contact John with your order.   

 

Ask Gov. Cuomo to declare a NYS Pollinator Week

Bumblebee on monarda
Bumblebee getting nectar from monarda
Last year 38 states declared their own state Pollinator Week, but so far, NYS has not joined in this effort.
With your help, the Pollinator Partnership hopes to reach 100% state participation this year.
 
Sample letter and suggested proclamation

Send your letter by the end of March to:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224

Join HGCNY!

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Becoming an official member of HGCNY is easy: just join Wild Ones! When you're a Wild Ones member, you're automatically an official member of HGCNY.
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Greetings!

Our February Program

We're pleased to welcome back SUNY-ESF Professor Andy Saunders. This year he'll present The Art of Nature Journaling: Growing Wise and Gardening Green, which will reveal some of the values and satisfactions of nature journaling. The program will examine some significant historical outcomes of keeping a nature journal and reveal a few of its better known practitioners. The program will include some practical suggestions for anyone unacquainted with nature journaling who would like to try their hand at the process.

frost
Jack Frost's last stand
Date/Place: Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 at 2:00 pm at Le Moyne College Library in the Special Activities Room on the first floor. (Directions) Our meetings are free and open to the public.

Snow cancellations: Just in case... If it's bad weather, before trudging off to our program, check your email and our website homepage.

CNY Blooms March 3 - 6

Visit our HGCNY booth at the War Memorial, a new venue for CNY Blooms. Janet will be speaking on Creating a Pollinator-friendly Yard on Friday, March 4 at 1:00 pm.

 

Waiting for spring,

Janet  

April 2 Carolyn Summers workshop

Summers bookHGCNY and Baltimore Woods Nature Center are pleased to co-sponsor our first workshop. We're pleased to have Carolyn Summers, author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East as our presenter.

Since the book's publication, she's been in great demand for presentations and has been given excellent reviews. We're delighted that she's coming to central New York.

REGISTRATION is now open
Call Baltimore Woods at 673.1350
.
More information is on the Baltimore Woods website.
Note: There are two separate sessions, and you can register for one or both.
Good news! Official dues-paying Wild Ones members receive a discount. 

Hurry! Registration is limited to 70 people, so register soon!
Monarch wing
Update on monarchs
At this time of year, their fat stores are running low, so monarchs
overwintering in Mexico will soon be starting their journey north.

Good news and bad news: The population has rebounded some from last year. BUT the population is still smaller than in the past. (See graph and current news...)  

Migration video: There's a very nice 6-minute YouTube video on the monarch's life story from Amazing Journeys.

Temperature and survival: Did you know that monarchs need cold weather to survive? Journey North has an excellent slide show about how the balance between warm and cold affects the monarch's survival.

The Mexican people: The monarch's survival is tied to the life of the Mexican people. Journey North has a number of short, interesting videos of the life of the people near the monarch's overwintering areas.
"Bee" ready to help pollinators
Sunflower
Lemon Queen sunflower (Helianthus annuus
'Lemon Queen')
The plight of honey bees gets a lot of media attention, but scientists are increasingly discovering that native pollinators such as bumblebees are in decline, too. (Honey bees are not native to our continent.)

Scientists are also discovering how important native bees are for pollinating our crops and flowering plants in most ecosystems.

The good news is that home gardens can become a refuge for these important pollinators. Here's how:

1) Plant native plants throughout the season. Some especially good ones are bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), lavendar hyssop (
Agastache foeniculum), coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), goldenrod (Solidago, such as S. caesia), New England aster (Aster novae-angliae), and sunflower (see below). Bees love many native shrubs, such as winterberry (Ilex verticillata), even though the flowers are small.

2) Provide nesting places. Bare ground is good for bumblebees, they may also nest under grasses such as the beautiful prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis). Solitary bees will appreciate various homes. See what they use in our yard and some of the commercial houses you can buy or make yourself (links to instructions are in the sidebar).

3) Don't use insecticides.

4) Participate in the Great Sunflower Project, a citizen science project. Plan to grow Lemon Queen sunflowers or one of the other kinds of flowers they list and count the number of bees that visit your plants. This will help scientists get an estimate of just how many bees there are...or are not.