Here at Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens we know the value of a garden. We work to create welcoming habitats for wildlife with native plants. We know that when we all create healthy gardens this helps create healthy ecosystems. And healthy ecosystems create a healthy planet. We know that native plants support local foodwebs which feed the wildlife [...]

Walk through any neighborhood and you’ll see the same plants used over and over again. Landscapers and garden designers seem to use the same limited palette of plants all the time, even from region to region. Some of these plants are quite invasive and actually destroy wildlife habitat. But how do you know what to plant [...]

One of the great blessings in my life is to have gathered such an amazing team together here at Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. As a team we support each other, celebrate our successes, and participate in the conversation we are creating here. And we will honor each other in times of sadness. Our team member, [...]

I’ve been in Florida for the past several weeks taking care of my mom who is quite ill. One thing I’ve learned from Susan J. Tweit about this process is that it’s really important to find the beauty of nature around me each day. In this way I am able to find some peace and solace and renew [...]

Imagine you’re a salamander. You spend the year in upland habitats in the leaf litter, but one day in spring you heed the call of nature and make your way down to the pond because it’s breeding season. For generations your ancestors have made this journey to the same pond. You have made this journey [...]

As cities spread into suburbs and suburbs spread into farmland, we have destroyed a lot of habitat for wildlife in our insatiable appetite for yet another Walmart or housing development. Within a 5 mile radius of my house there are 19 large shopping centers, each with several big box stores, groceries, and acre after acre [...]

While I was researching my thesis, which led to the development of the principles of Ecosystem Gardening, I came across a book by Dave Foreman. Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century eloquently describes six “wounds” that the human population is inflicting on ecosystems which are contributing to the decline of species The wound of [...]

I read these stories when I was quite young while on a personal quest to read through the entire set of encyclopedias and year books in my family’s home, and even at that young age, I began to see a pattern: humans would take and take and take until they had destroyed something, and then [...]

After my discovery of Sara Stein’s Noah’s Garden, I set about trying to learn everything I could about using an ecological approach to creating welcoming habitats for wildlife in our gardens. I devoured Sara’s next book, Planting Noah’s Garden: Further Explorations in Backyard Ecology, but I was missing something. I was lonely. My clients wanted to have more [...]

After my discovery that I had been making many mistakes in creating welcoming habitat for wildlife in my garden as well as my client’s gardens, I went on a mission to find out everything that I could about how to best share our spaces with the critters around us. At this time, there was very little information, [...]