All the Dirt on Gardening

If you watch garden center trends you have noticed that hundreds of hybrids have been developed from native plants. The claim is that they are just as good for the environment as true native plants but have much nicer features such as form, flower color, size at maturity, disease resistance, etc. National Wildlife magazine begs to differ from that marketing assertion, pointing out that the clones are really not as good for the environment as we may think. Click on this link to read the entire article. Excerpts are below. " Native plants have formed symbiotic relationships with native wildlife over thousands of years, and therefore offer the most sustainable habitat. A plant is considered native if it has occurred naturally in a particular region, ecosystem, or habitat without human introduction. Exotic plants that evolved in other parts of the world or were  cultivated by humans into forms that don’t exist in nature do not  support wildlife as well as native p...

Doug Tallamy packs auditoriums everywhere he speaks and last week he had a crowd of 250 with standing room only at the Tulsa Garden Center. Tallamy is America’s hero of the movement to save humans by restoring the natural food web, one back yard garden, public space and corporate green space at a time. Dozens of research studies have pointed to the emotional and physical health benefits of plant corridors over mowed spaces but Tallamy’s knowledge and passion push participants to feel an urgency to make a commitment, no matter how small.  Whether you have some control over a public area or a residential neighborhood space, Tallamy suggests that you select plants that support and improve life. The building blocks of habitat are bunching grasses instead of lawn grasses that need to be mowed, shrubbery that wildlife can use rather than useless ones, and beneficial canopy and understory trees.  Every patio, front yard, park, fence line and community can begi...

Clark Shilling speaking at Muskogee Garden Club 9:30 am Oct 16 Kiwanis Senior Center 119 Spaulding DR Information Susan Asquith 918-682-3688 Free and open to the public ------------------------------------------------------------- Among gardeners andnature-lovers , there has been a gradual migration from a just-plant-something philosophy to a plant-something-useful philosophy over the past ten years or more. It’s not that raising roses and lilies is frowned upon, it’s more that we are being urged to add a few herbs or vegetables, shrubs that make berries or put in more environmentally friendly native plant varieties. There is a free online course available at www.ecosystemgardening.com . The author Carole Sevilla-Brown defined the Five Pillars of Ecosystem Gardening: Sustainable Gardening, Water Conservation, Plant More Native Plants, Build Soil Health, and Remove Invasive Plants. Making the change is easy to do if it is done in small steps. For exampl...

Two new books, “Native Plants of the Southeast” and “The Living Landscape” written by garden writers from the east coast of the US focus on their part of the world but definitely pertain to zone 7 northeast Oklahoma in the Ozark Plateau. Book authors and publishers always forget about us because they still think of OK as being the landscape they saw in dust bowl movies even though only the OK panhandle was in the central part of that tragedy. With our normal rainfall at 44-inches annually, and our lowest temperature recorded at zero, the climate zone is the same as many eastern states covered by these two beautiful books. “Native Plants of the Southeast: A Comprehensive Guide to the Best 460 Species for the Garden” by Larry Mellichamp was published by Timber Press this year. It is a 384-page, 8 by 10-inch hardback with 542-color photos. The list price is $40 (www.timberpress.com) and $25 at online retailers. The author, Larry Mellichamp is a botany professor at the University o...