HGCNY Plant sale Sat., Sept. 10, 10-noon
 | | Flowering spurge
(Euphorbia corollata)
Like baby's breath, but nicer!
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Our annual HGCNY plant sale will take place at the Allens (directions). Plants not sold on Saturday will still be available for sale on Sunday, Sept. 11 from 1 - 3 pm.
Tree and shrub order due
This year, we're beginning a new tree and shrub procedure from Jim Engel's White Oak Nursery. Instead of ordering trees and shrubs at the plant sale, please pre-order them ASAP, preferably by Sun., Sept. 4, and then you'll be able to pick them up at the plant sale (or at some later time if you're not able to get them on Sept. 10).
To see what shrubs and trees are available, go to the White Oak website. The cost will be $5 more than the price listed on the website to cover delivery costs and provide HGCNY with a modest profit (this is what lets us keep this newsletter and our programs free to the public!) Send your order to John. Pay when you pick up your trees and shrubs.
Check out some of the possibilities
This year we'll have plants from five of our sponsors, together with plants provided by our own members. There should be a nice variety of plants, but if there's a particular plant you'd like, contact John, and we'll see if we can have them available.
You can see some of the plants we could have available by checking the Dan Segal's Plantsmen website or Ellen Folts' Amanda's Garden website.
Please contribute your native plants
If you have extra native (native only, please!) plants in your garden please pot them up and bring them to the sale. Please identify your plants! People providing plants or working at the sale can begin to select plants at 9:00 A.M.
Volunteers needed to return unsold plants
We're looking for volunteers to return unsold plants. We're also looking for places (schools, community gardens, etc.) that would use any unsold member-donated plants.
~ John Allen and Randi Starmer,
Plant Sale Committee |
| Syracuse Grows workshops |
 | | kale |
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Building Raised Garden Beds with a Raised Bed Building Demonstration by Les Ulm Wed., Sept. 14, 5:30-7:30 pm at the Southwest Community Farm (100 Bellevue Ave., Syr.) RSVP by email or call 424-9485 ext. 229 Open to all gardeners
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| Interested in Edible Gardening? | 
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If you'd like to get information on Edible Gardening CNY, just send an email to John to find out about edible gardening tours and programs.
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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!
Lots of news to share this month.
 | Winterberry
(Ilex verticillata)
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1) Sat., Sept. 10: Our annual plant sale
The plant sale will be on Sat., Sept. 10 at 10 am. Details are in the article at the left.
We need some volunteers to help return unsold plants. Contact John if you can help. Thanks! 2) NEW venue for our meetings!! The Le Moyne College Library's Special Activity Room has been a wonderful venue for our meetings for the last few years. Thank you to Beth Mitchell for arranging for us to be able to use it! But we're beginning to outgrow this space - a good problem to have.
We're pleased to announce that we'll now be meeting at Liverpool Public Library in the Carman Room, and also that Liverpool Library will co-sponsor our programs.
3) Our program year starts soon
We have a whole year of interesting programs. Thank you to Carol Biesemeyer, our program chairman!
September program: Ecology of Natural Plant Communities in Upstate New York
We're excited to start our program year with popular speaker Donald Leopold, SUNY-ESF professor and author of Native Plants of the Northeast.
Dr. Leopold will discuss the distribution and abundance of plant species, the basic ecology underlying many of the plant communities in Upstate New York, and plant species relative to specific environmental conditions. He'll highlight a number of projects that incorporate these ideas and suggest how home gardeners could apply these principles to their own landscapes.
Free and open to the public.
WHEN: Sun., Sept. 25 at 2 p.m.
WHERE: Liverpool Library (NOT Le Moyne)
4) HGCNY is back on Facebook
As we get more followers, this could be a good way to ask (and answer!) fellow HGCNYers' questions about habitat gardening.
Janet
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Another chance to get natives
Larry Keassa of Maple Hill Nursery, one of our sponsors, is a vendor at the Syracuse Regional Market on Saturday mornings.
He grows and sells native plants and will be bringing a large contingent of his native plants to the Regional Market on Saturday, September 18. He is in Shed A toward the north end of the building.
He has generously offered to donate part of the proceeds to HGCNY. Another of our members will be there from 10:00 A.M. to noon to answer questions about native plants and help in your selection.
We could also use another volunteer to help staff the booth for a couple of hours. Email John if you can help. Thanks! |
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Tired of goose poop?
 | | Lawn attracts geese |
There are lots of humane ways to make your
yard less appealing to geese. And even better, many of these measures will make your yard more habitat-friendly in general.
First, though, think about striking a balance. Do we have to shoo away every single goose? Some may be there only temporarily during migration.
Tips for discouraging geese:
* One of the best ways to discourage geese is to reduce closely-trimmed lawn, especially Kentucky bluegrass. As Rodale News puts it, such a lawn is "like putting a filet mignon in front of a steak fanatic." * If you have waterfront property, plant native plants along the edge rather than having a mown lawn right down to the water. * Don't feed them. * Let dogs, such as border collies, herd them out of the area. Read more about these tips and others at Rodale News ... |
Fall into Phenology is a 10-day campaign from Sept. 17-26 asking people all over the continent to note what plants are doing as the seasons change. It's easy to participate, and should take only about 10 minutes after you register.
The more people participating across the country, the better the geographic coverage and the more useful the data is to scientists.
Teachers and parents: This is a very doable project that can be an enjoyable and important learning experience.
And what exactly IS phenology?
Phenology is literally "the science of appearance." It is the study of the timing of the biological events in plants and animals such as flowering, leafing, hibernation, reproduction, and migration. Scientists who study phenology are interested in the timing of such biological events in relation to changes in season and climate. Read more from Project Budburst... |
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How do monarchs know when to leave?
 One of the remarkable things about monarch butterflies is their life cycle. Some monarch eggs become butterflies that live just a few weeks, but some become butterflies that live for eight or nine months. At this time of year, the monarchs in our area are in reproductive diapause, a state of suspended development of their reproductive organs. They won't mate or lay eggs until spring. But how do this special generation know when to fly south? Shorter days, cooler nights, and even aging milkweed all play their part, in addition to the butterfly's own nervous system and hormones. Read more about this fall migration ... Read more about and see fantastic photos of monarch development in general from Ba Rea, the author of Milkweed, Monarchs, and More ... |
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Sara Stein on invasive plants
 | | Japanese knotweed |
In California, at a conservation forum attended largely by people who have come to be called "tree huggers," a sweet-faced young woman reproached me for my prejudice toward aliens. "After all," she said, "all plants grow from the same earth."
No, they do not. They grow in different portions of the earth, in differing conditions and as members of distinct communities within which, biologically speaking, they know their place.
Move them from that place, release them from their competitors, free them from their predators, give them license to behave without the external disciplines that have controlled their behavior in their homeland, and they may grow up barbarians.
~ Sara Stein, Planting Noah's Garden, p. 175 |
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A virtual tour of our habitat garden
Visit our habitat gardening website for information about providing habitat, earth-friendly gardening, plants, and about various creatures.
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