Now is the time to start thinking about fall planting in your yard or garden! Many birds such as cardinals, chickadees, bluebirds, robins, cedar waxwings and mockingbirds are year-round residents or migrate south to your area in winter. By planting native berry producing shrubs or trees you will attract these birds and ensure they have food throughout the winter.
A highly popular native groundcover; Wild Ginger's large heart-shaped leaves can be 6" in diameter, and its sturdy rootstocks create a dense network that creeps to cover woodland slopes. Excellent plant for full or deep shade and serves as host plant for swallowtail butterfly larval.
The flowerheads of purple headed sneezewood offer nectar and pollen as floral rewards to a wide range of insect visitors, including long-tongued bees, short-tongued bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and skippers. Various insects feed on the leaves, pith of the stems, and other parts of Helenium spp. (Sneezeweeds).
The New Jersey Landscape Contractors Association (NJLCA) is a proven resource to the landscape contractor, green industry service provider and supplier as well as the consumer. The following excerpt article is taken from the recently published SPRING 2018 edition of their magazine.
A beautiful woodland wildflower that has showy, drooping, bell-like flowers equipped with distinctly backward-pointing tubes, similar to the garden Columbines. These tubes, or spurs, contain nectar that attracts long-tongued insects and hummingbirds especially adapted for reaching the sweet secretion.
Although we hear about the benefits of mulch, over-mulching is the most destructive practice in the landscape today. The practice of mulch volcanoes, large mounds of mulch around your trees and shrubs is highly destructive. In ten years most trees with these volcanoes of mulch, encounter a slow and painful death for the plant.
Spring is certainly “roaring in like a lion”; however look on the bright side, it gives you a little extra time to prepare an organic vegetable garden for you, the family and children and yes even your pets. In fact, we have trained our dog to love organic carrots.