Category Archives: Pollination Gardens

Savoring With Several Senses

Fruit blossoms are sweet smelling and tasty Fragrant & Edible Flowers I recently saw a wonderful old cookbook from pioneer days that was all about edible flowers. Those hard working women may have been living in cabins with dirt floors, … Continue reading

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Living Perfumes

To find a fragrant mixture that makes us happy, we have to play around a little. One way to do this is to make small bouquets or tussie-mussies, layering the herbal with the floral, mixing and matching until you develop a clear sense of what floats your boat. Notice how various scents make you feel or what they spark in your memories: Generally speaking, gentle herbal scents encourage stressed bodies to relax. Bracingly aromatic odors invigorate dull moods. Certain perfumes unfailingly entice us to abandon ourselves to enjoyment, while others seem exhilarating or fascinatingly mysterious. Fragrance gardening is per force a deeply personal enterprise because you and your nose are unique. Continue reading

Posted in Garden Design, Gardening With Children, Hardy Herbs, Pollination Gardens, Sustainable Living | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Planting For Climate Change


Long blooming heat lovers thrive with few inputs Looking South For New Ideas I’ve been asked a lot lately about which plants might work best as our climate changes. Clearly, climate change is having enormous impacts on our forests as … Continue reading

Posted in Care & Feeding, Climate Change, Easy Care Perennials, Native Plants, Pollination Gardens, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Nurturing Monarchs

If Monarchs are no longer showing up, what’s the point? Planting projects to reestablish native milkweeds can have remarkable results. This summer, several members of the Deschutes Land Trust experienced an astonishing butterfly bonanza in Brookings, Oregon. A number of Land Trust members have learned how to nurture and support Monarchs by creating Waystations for migrating butterflies. These can be as small as a series of modest patches of milkweed and nectar-rich, long blooming flowers, or extensive pollinator gardens, well stocked with milkweeds and a wider variety of nectar and pollen producing plants. (To learn about the training and certification for Waystation making and maintaining, check out this link:

https://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/ .) Continue reading

Posted in Butterfly Gardens, Pollination Gardens, Pollinators | Tagged , , | 2 Comments