I've been inactive on the forum for the past couple years so I thought I'd make up for lost time and share some of the photos I've taken in my gardens in 2023 and 2024.
Last year was my 10th year of native gardening but the first time I ever did a garden burn! Prescribed burns are an important part of preserving tallgrass prairies in North America, so I replicated that same thing in my own native garden. Only the two sections you see below were able to be safely burned, but they sure seemed to respond well and the garden grew better last year than it had in recent years.
Here's the garden three months after the burn.
And four months after the burn
The endangered Rusty-patched bumble bee was a frequent visitor during the summer months. Helping wildlife is what my garden is all about, so I'm always thrilled when rare, vulnerable, and endangered species show up.
Dragonflies are one of my favorite visitors and I'm lucky to see quite a few species every year. This is an eastern amberwing.
Of course, another favorite are the ruby-throated hummingbirds. I've added a lot of their favorite native species over the years. This one is visiting Royal catchfly.
My garden pond is also still going well. Last spring the liner was punctured, but eventually I was able to find the issue and repair it. Repairing it was easy, finding the tiny puncture took me a long time!
My pond always has frogs around it. Mainly bullfrogs.
I let the purple poppy mallows go a little wild last year. This is supposed to be a pathway.
Last fall, I started a few new projects. The first is a row of mostly redtwig dogwoods and a cedar tree. My neighbor built a massive garage that basically looks like a warehouse, so this row of shrubs and trees should help make it less of an eyesore eventually. It'll also provide as much as 500 sq. ft. of habitat for birds and mammals! The dogwoods will take at least a few years to start filling in. I may plant some other native species in between to help make the space more beneficial to wildlife until the dogwoods take over.
The other two projects are expansions of small garden strips I had under my nest boxes. They were originally just narrow strips of garden space, now they're much larger and more rounded. I removed the grass last fall and seeded it in winter. I have some more seed to spread this spring. Main species will hopefully be native grasses (big bluestem, indian grass, little bluestem, side oats grama, canada wild rye), as well as rattlesnake master, butterflyweed, royal catchfly, and others. Only time will tell what works here.
A smaller project I had last year was changing the hole size on all of my birdhouses. They were originally designed for tree swallows, but eventually aggressive, non-native house sparrows started taking them all over and tree swallows couldn't compete. So in spring of last year I made the holes smaller so that only house wrens could use them. Almost immediately, the wrens started showing up and I had nests in at least two of the boxes! Sparrows did attempt to get in but couldn't, so that's a success!
One last thing I want to highlight is my mailbox garden. I took a scrap piece of wood from an old birdhouse and made homemade sign for the mailbox garden so people who are walking or biking past will see that it's a native garden for pollinators. I may try to make a better sign at some point but for now it gets the job done. The garden itself looked really nice last year. Hairy beardtongue in particular really put on a show!
And lastly just some extra photos of wildlife in my gardens.
Last year was my 10th year of native gardening but the first time I ever did a garden burn! Prescribed burns are an important part of preserving tallgrass prairies in North America, so I replicated that same thing in my own native garden. Only the two sections you see below were able to be safely burned, but they sure seemed to respond well and the garden grew better last year than it had in recent years.
Here's the garden three months after the burn.
And four months after the burn
The endangered Rusty-patched bumble bee was a frequent visitor during the summer months. Helping wildlife is what my garden is all about, so I'm always thrilled when rare, vulnerable, and endangered species show up.
Dragonflies are one of my favorite visitors and I'm lucky to see quite a few species every year. This is an eastern amberwing.
Of course, another favorite are the ruby-throated hummingbirds. I've added a lot of their favorite native species over the years. This one is visiting Royal catchfly.
My garden pond is also still going well. Last spring the liner was punctured, but eventually I was able to find the issue and repair it. Repairing it was easy, finding the tiny puncture took me a long time!
My pond always has frogs around it. Mainly bullfrogs.
I let the purple poppy mallows go a little wild last year. This is supposed to be a pathway.
Last fall, I started a few new projects. The first is a row of mostly redtwig dogwoods and a cedar tree. My neighbor built a massive garage that basically looks like a warehouse, so this row of shrubs and trees should help make it less of an eyesore eventually. It'll also provide as much as 500 sq. ft. of habitat for birds and mammals! The dogwoods will take at least a few years to start filling in. I may plant some other native species in between to help make the space more beneficial to wildlife until the dogwoods take over.
The other two projects are expansions of small garden strips I had under my nest boxes. They were originally just narrow strips of garden space, now they're much larger and more rounded. I removed the grass last fall and seeded it in winter. I have some more seed to spread this spring. Main species will hopefully be native grasses (big bluestem, indian grass, little bluestem, side oats grama, canada wild rye), as well as rattlesnake master, butterflyweed, royal catchfly, and others. Only time will tell what works here.
A smaller project I had last year was changing the hole size on all of my birdhouses. They were originally designed for tree swallows, but eventually aggressive, non-native house sparrows started taking them all over and tree swallows couldn't compete. So in spring of last year I made the holes smaller so that only house wrens could use them. Almost immediately, the wrens started showing up and I had nests in at least two of the boxes! Sparrows did attempt to get in but couldn't, so that's a success!
One last thing I want to highlight is my mailbox garden. I took a scrap piece of wood from an old birdhouse and made homemade sign for the mailbox garden so people who are walking or biking past will see that it's a native garden for pollinators. I may try to make a better sign at some point but for now it gets the job done. The garden itself looked really nice last year. Hairy beardtongue in particular really put on a show!
And lastly just some extra photos of wildlife in my gardens.
