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, [...]

Mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. And so did my clients. It was the catalogs. Gorgeous photos of beautiful plants with pictures of birds and stunning butterflies photoshopped into the pictures. It was garden porn at its best. And it worked. I was seduced by these pretty faces and eagerly bought up any plant [...]

Many years ago a small, persistent Chickadee called to me and changed the course of my life’s work. From there I began my journey to become a wildlife gardener, and to help people learn to make healthier choices in their gardens. I began to study ecology, plant-insect interactions, ornithology, herpetology, butterflies, pollinators, and more. You name the [...]

Many years ago a Chickadee changed the course of my life’s work. This tiny bird is bold and persistent, and it set me on a journey of learning how to share our spaces with the wildlife around us. While I did hang a bird feeder for this little bird, I began to wonder how it took care [...]