Research

  • If You Plant It, They Will Find It (2/5/2025) - Birds need food, the food that emerges from the ecosystems of native birches and oaks, willows and maples, and from elderberries, serviceberries, viburnums, and winterberries. They need food when they're year-round residents and food when they're migrating. And when you plant the food-supplying trees and shrubs birds need, the birds will stop.
  • Maryland Native Plant Legislation Supports Native Species and Restricts Invasives (9/16/2024) - In 2023, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation, signed by Governor Wes Moore, to create the Maryland Native Plants Program. In May of 2024, the governor signed the Agriculture – Invasive Plant Species – Regulation section of the Biodiversity and Agriculture Protection Act, which limits the sale of nonnative invasive plants in Maryland.
  • Spring Arrives – Early, Beautiful, and Unsettling (5/10/2024) - On March 6, I wrote, "The miniature irises in my garden, early spring-blooming bulbs, have already flowered and faded. The daffodils are in their prime, cheerily, ecstatically yellow."
  • So What Exactly Is a Native Plant? The Pollinator-Friendly Plant Labeling Act May Have an Answer (9/15/2023) - When talking about gardening, it doesn't take long before native plants become part of the conversation. One question comes up repeatedly in these conversations, a fundamental question with an elusive answer: "What exactly is a native plant?"
  • What’s Wrong with Your Plant? First Observe, Then Check Extension Services for Help (1/15/2023) - Gardening is a belief in the future. You plant, do your best to provide a good environment, cross your fingers, and hope nature will support your view of how the space should look. With living plants as the medium, the process can be tricky. Many plants will flourish in the locations you've chosen for them, but others will become diseased and a few may die sooner than expected.
  • Learning from Nature, Gathering Data – Citizen Science in the Garden (11/3/2022) - On the day the International Union for the Conservation of Nature announced that migratory monarch butterflies had been added to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, I found a monarch caterpillar chewing on milkweed in my garden. An internationally recognized endangered species was reproducing in my suburban garden. Could restoring the environment really be this easy?
  • 3,500 Square Feet, 25 Species, No Feeders – The Birds in My Backyard (8/2/2022) - When I first began gardening, setting up a few feeders seemed the best strategy for attracting birds to my backyard. Several years later, my perspective has changed. I decided to take down the feeders to see what would happen.
  • Leave the Leaves, But Why? Look to the Research (6/26/2022) - Leave the leaves! It’s an exhortation to gardeners to stop raking and blowing tree, shrub, and perennial leaves that drop in autumn, keeping the leaves in the garden as a natural mulch. If you think about how a forest functions, leaving the leaves makes sense. But does leaving the leaves in a residential garden really help?
  • Reconsidering Peat in the Garden (1/24/2022) - Whether classified as fen, mire, tropical swamp forest, or permafrost bog, peatlands store more carbon than the vegetation of all other landforms on Earth combined. With their unique ecology and thousand-year histories, peatlands also are places of mystery and beauty. Reconsidering peat in the garden is one way to contribute to their survival.
  • Why It’s Not a Good Idea to Plant a Butterfly Bush (9/6/2021) - The butterfly bush -- Buddleja, or Buddleia, davidii and other species -- is a butterfly magnet. An easy to grow, rapidly developing shrub, it seems a good choice for the pollinator garden. But it's not.