Here is a six day long project (June 17-23) to engage your kids who are at home this summer -- or you yourself, perhaps! National Pollinator Week is celebrating a BioBlitz, and all you need to participate is a camera and a free subscription to iNaturalist.
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Are you in need of some inspiration for your next gardening phase? Are you wondering if any non-native invasives are creeping around your yard? Would you like to observe more pollinators and birds?
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This time of year, I am known by those who ride in the car with me to call out “Privet! Privet! Privet!” in the same tone that others might use to acknowledge rattlesnakes on a footpath or hippopotami in the swimming pool.
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Let’s begin by assuming that you have not planted a solitary specimen of privet in your garden. If you have, the solution is simple. Make one strong cut across the stem or stems just above soil level, and follow by digging out the remaining roots. If you need a lovely specimen to fill in its place, the world is full of beautiful native shrunbs; pick one you love, and plant it in the privet’s place.
This method also works well for privet plants that have popped up in your garden without being intentionally planted. Just Remove Them.
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It has been more than a year since Jane Ellison, Robin Schachat, Kathryn Craig and Wendy Donkin began creating the program for homeowners that would become Nature in My Backyard, and which was launched as a pilot program at the 2023 Audubon Society of Greater Cleveland (ASGC) Centennial Celebration.
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We have lost 3 billion birds in the last 50 years and the decline is continuing …… What is a person to do??
Zoom in on MAY 1 (TOMORROW) at NOON to hear John Barber.
Planting is for the Birds - A Primer for your Yard
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Nature in My Backyard (NMB) is a program designed to address the global biodiversity crisis by bringing research-based information to homeowners for improving habitat on their property.
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April 16 at 7 pm
Drinks and Dessert
Join SLGC to celebrate Earth Month!
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Early in the spring it is a great pleasure to go for a walk and see the lovely fresh green of early emerging foliage on trees and shrubs – “spring green” is a happy phrase almost whenever you hear it, signaling renewal, regrowth, the onset of longer and sunnier days. Unfortunately, locally one of the earliest of these pretty sights is the soft green leaf of a bush honeysuckle.
Honeysuckles are members of the genus Lonicera. None of the bush species of Lonicera is native to Ohio.
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First of all I am going to make an assumption. Most of us whose gardens have been invaded by bush honeysuckles have not set out intentionally to include them, so the vast majority are invaders into existing mixed hedges, woodland edges, and odd spots.
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April 16 at 7 pm
Drinks and Dessert
Join SLGC to celebrate Earth Month!
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If you encounter non-native buckthorn in your garden, you truly must remove it – that’s a WHEN, not an IF. And the sooner, the better, or your neighbors will hate you! Once it is gone, you will probably want something else to take its place.
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It’s that time of the year, dear friends – the time when flowers are everywhere…in catalogues. But we can still plan for floral pleasure in the darkest days of the year. Martha Marsh sent me an email on Christmas; honeybees are mobbing her Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose. In my garden, being hit by ice pellets as I write, three of my Hamamelis are in full and fragrant bloom.
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With this article, your Nature in my Backyard program begins a series of articles on the worst invasive non-native plants that are common in our northeast Ohio residential gardens, and appropriate native plants with which they should be replaced. Our inaugural article celebrates a recent triumph against one of the worst invaders, the Callery Pear, which crowds native trees out of our local forests.
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A lone female flashing on the ground is saying: "Hey fellas!". Hopefully you left some areas in your garden with leaves over the winter and it won't be long until the whole yard is full of fireflies at dusk.
But wait…..it might not happen even if you did "leave your leaves." If you or your neighbors have outdoor lights on at night it can harm lightning bugs, pollinators, and many other insects. Half of all insect species are nocturnal. They need darkness, except for moon and star light to orient as they search for food and a mate.
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The beds are prepared with soft soil and compost, the plants have been picked up in Wooster, now all we need is YOU…..in your garden clothes, with a trowel.
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August is a wonderful time of year to observe many insects nectaring and gathering pollen in our gardens as they get ready for winter—beetles, native bees and wasps.
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