Hummingbird and one of its favorites: jewelweed, a native impatiens ( More on hummingbirds at   Our Habitat Garden)

We have a BONUS "Show Me, Help Me" tour this year.

We're bringing back our tradition of having a professional landscaper give some tips at the tour.

Our landscaper will be Laura Shaddak, and we'll be touring Joe and Pat Macie's home in DeWitt near St. Sophia's church.

The Macies have a fairly typical front yard with about half lawn and trees and an attempt at a perennial garden (deer and bunnies permitting). The backyard is heavily wooded (locust, box elder, hawthorn, maple and an old pear tree ) and is full of fairly mature buckthorns that they have spent the summer slowly removing. The ground is full of garlic mustard. They have a struggling veggie garden - struggling because of shade and deer and bunnies.
 
As with our meetings, the Show Me, Help Me tours are free and open to the public. RSVP Joe and Pat by email for the specific address and directions.

Janet Allen, President, HGCNY

Verbena hastata

The annual HGCNY plant sale will be held on Sat., Sept. 13 from 9:30 am to noon. Plants not sold on Saturday will be available on Sun., Sept. 14 from 1 pm to 3 pm.

Location: At the Allens (directions).

We will have an assortment of plants from The Plantsmen, Amanda's Garden, and Maple Hill Landscaping in addition to plants donated by HGCNYers. Check out our Native Plant Shopping Guide (below) to see what is available from these vendors.

If there are particular plants that you want please let us know and we'll try to acquire them and, if numbers are limited, hold them for you. Send your requests to John at eg.cny@verizon.net.

Special note on shrub and tree seedlings
Tree and shrub seedlings will also be available by ordering in advance. These pre-orders will be available at the sale on Saturday. To see what shrubs and trees are available go to www.whiteoaknursery.biz and click on "Potted Seedlings".

To cover the additional costs of the container and delivery and as a small contribution toward the cost of our monthly programs, our price will be $5 more than the price listed on the White Oak Nursery website. To order the seedlings, email John listing the name of the tree or shrub, the number you want, and the price, i.e. the White Oak Nursery price + $5. (And if you have White Oak Nursery pots from last year, bring them along and Jim will credit us for them!)

If you're not able to pick them up during the plant sale on Sept. 13 or 14, indicate that you need to arrange another time/date.

Plant donations
If you have plants to donate, you can bring them between 8 am and 9 am the day of the sale .

People who bring plants between 8 am and 9 am on the day of the sale will have the opportunity to buy plants prior to the 9:30 am starting time. Contact John if you want to bring plants before September 7.

Thank you for participating in our plant sale! It not only gets native plants planted in CNY to benefit both people and wildlife, but also funds this newsletter, our programs, and other projects!

You can enjoy dragonflies and damselflies in your own yard if you have a water feature ... and, of course, native plants.

Why native plants? 
Dragonflies eat insects, and what better to provide insects than native plants.

And according to the Smithsonian Institution, one dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes a day. ( More Fun Facts from the Smithsonian...)

Backyard ponds
The Xerces Society has created a wonderful resource: Backyard Ponds - Guidelines for Creating and Managing Habitat for Dragonflies and Damselflies.
You can download a free .pdf at
xerces.org/backyard-ponds/ or see a quick synopsis at

Leafcutter bee More about homes for bees at Our Habitat Garden

It's easy to supply food for native bees. Just provide lots of native flowering plants.

But creatures need to raise their young, too.

We're familiar with hives as places where the non-native honey bee raises young, and we know that social bumble bees nest in the ground.

But we're not as familiar with the needs of native solitary bees.

First, it's good to know that, unlike the honey bee that aggressively defends its hive, most native solitary bees are not aggressive at all since they don't have a hive to defend.

Second, native solitary bees (as well as bumblebees) are very effective pollinators -- generally more effective than even honey bees, which are used since they're easy to manage and transport around the country as migrant workers. (And honey bees cannot even pollinate some plants, such as tomatoes.)

It's easy to provide nesting areas for solitary bees and bumblebees.
* Leave some bare ground for ground nesters, such as bumble bees.
* Provide snags or dead wood for wood nesters.

If you want to provide man-made nests either because it's so interesting to watch them or because you have a lot of edible garden plants to be pollinated, you can either buy or build nest boxes.

More information is available at OurHabitatGarden.org, including a link to PBS'  Growing a Greener World's episode on Solitary Bees.

We generally have "live" programs, but we made two exceptions this past program year: we heard a video presentation by Doug Tallamy, and we viewed Catherine Zimmerman's Meadowscaping video. Both were enthusiastically received!

Good news!
Now Catherine Zimmerman is working on a new film, and it's featuring Doug Tallamy. Hometown Habitat is a 90-minute documentary that will show how and why native plants are critical to the survival and vitality of local ecosystems. Doug Tallamy will provide the narrative thread throughout the movie.

The message: "We can change the notion that humans are here and nature is some place else. It doesn't have to, and shouldn't be that way." Each individual has the power to conserve resources, restore habitat for wildlife and bring beauty to their patch of earth.

In the last newsletter, we mentioned that you could donate on The Meadow Project website. We've since learned that Wild Ones is fundraising for this documentary, too. We need $5,000 in donations to get mentioned in the credits. This would be a big boost for Wild Ones and for our goal of encouraging people to plant native plant to preserve biodiversity.

Wild Ones Silent Auction
All profits from the auction will be donated to Hometown Habitat. HGCNY has contributed a few items to the auction and other donations will be accepted, too. Read the Guidelines and bid on the items!

Individual donations to Hometown Habitat
HGCNY will be making a donation, but you can also send an individual donation. Note that it is a donation for Hometown Habitat and send it to Wild Ones at:
Wild Ones
PO Box 1274
Appleton, WI 54912

Wild Ones will pool individuals' donations, donations made by chapters, and the profits from the Online Auction and hopefully we'll reach our $5,000 goal.

In This Issue

Robin Kimmerer

Wed., Sept. 24, 7:30 pm at the Gateway Center
(Directions)
Admission to the lecture and reception if FREE and open to the public.
Parking will be available on campus.

In 2014, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon as Professor Kimmerer shares insights from indigenous environmental ethics on species conservation.

Dr. Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss, will sign copies of her books after the talk.

Her books will be sold from 6:00 to 7:15 pm at the ESF Bookstore in the Gateway Center prior to her talk, and for an hour after her talk.

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