I started a Bluesky page to share about my love of nature: My MTH Friends & Kin. (You can see it without having an account. Copy and paste this into your URL: https://bsky.app/profile/mymthfriendskin.bsky.social)

One recent post was about Ferns:

Ferns are my friends & kin because kin start as cute, tightly curled-up fuzzy fiddleheads; later kin open up wide and majestically. Coming in a lot of varieties, ferns are easy to grow and maintain. Who doesn't love ferns? 

We go to Garden in the Woods (www.nativeplanttrust.org/visit/garden-woods) in Framingham, a lot (I highly recommend joining and going often). I took the pictures shown at GIW (but I have these and/or many more species of ferns in my gardens in Ashland too): Ostrich Fern (1st & 4th), American Royal Fern, and Northern Maidenhair Fern.

I'm also doing lots of photography and posting on iNat (See www.inaturalist.org, dagtrees). I love to help others get started learning and supporting Community Science on iNat too. Contact me if you want support!

Happy gardening!

Diana (per/they)

"In the intricate dance of nature, insects are the choreographers of biodiversity."

―E.O. Wilson

When I moved here from California, I found myself the owner of a large (certainly by California standards) lawn. As a biologist, I knew the health hazards of the chemicals often applied to lawns—poisons to humans, especially children, and to wildlife and waterways. As a result, I can imagine what my neighbors thought of my yard.  And then I heard the entomologist Doug Tallamy speak to the magnitude of threats to life because of our decimation of insect populations. As another famous ecologist and entomologist, E.O. Wilson, said:

“If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.”

The plush green lawns once considered a status symbol are now recognized as the culprit for devastating vital insect populations. Perhaps you’ve heard about the “insect apocalypse” and the loss of nearly three billion North American breeding birds.  These major casualties are related as 96% of terrestrial bird species rely on insects, especially caterpillars, to feed their young. For example, research from Tallamy’s lab has shown that chickadees need 6,000-9,000 caterpillars to raise a single brood. So, as pollinating moths decline, so do the birds that rely on them.

After learning all this, I decided to convert as much of my front yard as I could manage. I painstakingly removed two-thirds of the lawn and replaced it with ecograss, which needs no fertilizer, less water, and less mowing (https://www.prairiemoon.com/eco-grass), and added a native plant pollinator garden.

Tallamy especially recommends planting “keystone plants.” He adapted this term from the ecologist Robert Paine who originated “keystone species” to signify species that are critical to the survival of the other species in the system.

By selecting keystone plants for your garden, you can support higher numbers of beneficial insects, including pollinators. Some excellent choices for the number of caterpillar and bee species they support are blueberry bushes, goldenrod, asters, and woodland sunflowers. Here is a reference for more options of North American Keystone Plants: https://homegrownnationalpark.org/keystone-plants/?_ecoregion=mixed-wood-plains)

I have been listening to many podcasts and books about the need for native plants and insects for a healthy ecosystem. I used to buy plants for my visual pleasure. Now I find plants native to Massachusetts and only buy them. I learned that grass is a food desert for the more-than-human world including insects and birds so I am turning a large section of my back yard into a Merry Meadow with native wildflowers.

Garden in the Woods in Framingham is a great resource with examples on their wooded trails, plants for sale, and a shop for books. I used this site: https://plantfinder.nativeplanttrust.org/index.cfm to look at maps to make sure the plants I am buying are native to MA so I support native insects and birds, and this site helps too: https://plantfinder.nativeplanttrust.org/Plant-Search.  Nature's Archive is a great podcast for learning from experts. 

I would love to be a part of a native-wildflower-lover community to share ideas and learning. 

Pictured is Bloodroot. A native wildflower that has been spread by ants in rivers 'round my house. So lovely, they bring me joy every year, and feeding native insects that feed birds, and more. 

About three years ago I started reading about pollinator decline and, at the same time, was wondering what to do about a stretch of yard where grass didn't grow well.  As a completely novice gardener, I had no idea what types of flowers were suited to my yard's particular situation.  So I bought a pollinator flower mix from American Meadows, pulled weeds best I could and threw some seed over a couple of de-weeded spots and figured I'd go from there.

Here's the before shot from August 2022 where I had just a small vegetable garden with a tomato plant or two:

At the end of the first growing season (Sept 2023), I had some moderate success, with sunflower, black eyed susans and sulphur cosmos patches making an appearance:

Fast forward to this year, with now two additional years of knowledge and experimentation plus lots of yard time clearing dead grass, pulling new weeds, spreading additional seed and watering seedlings as they establish, my formerly neglected stretch of mostly dead grass is over a thousand square feet of flowering plants:

This picture is from late June after the black eyed susans popped.  About 3 weeks prior to that, there was a long bloom of lanceleaf coreopsis that started in mid-late may. Further down the street you can see a hint of violet from the bee balm balm that was just starting to bloom, and in the foreground you can see one lonely bright orange butterfly milkweed establishing itself.   Later in the season, the partridge pea, goldenrod, ironweed, aster, sunflower and cosmos will take the handoff from the black eyed susan and bee balm, ensuring flowers until frost.  It's certainly a different look than a cleanly mowed lawn (you can have both!) but one that I think adds both visual and enviromnental benefit.  

It was a lot of work on my part, so I'd be lying if I said that establishing a flower meadow is a low maintenance endeavor compared to just mowing that same stretch and calling it a day.  My suggestion is to start small.  I've had good success identifying a patch where grass grows poorly, cutting that patch as low as possible, covering that spot with cardboard or brown paper bags (or a leaf bag) and covering that with a bag or two of soil.  That process kills the weeds and grass and establishes a new layer of fresh topsoil for the flower seed (start with a mix until you know what grows in your yard).  Timing also matters, as many native plant seeds need a winter season to break down their seed shells, so read instructions to see whether your seeds would be better planted in the fall versus spring.  With regular mainenance and watering during growing season, you'll likely have something from your mix start growing by May or June.  The bees, butterflies and bugs will thank you!