Anthony Marinello, a permaculture and rewilding expert, presents this session on Native Garden maintenance for new and experienced rewilders alike. He walks us through the seasonal calendar, discussing the do’s and don’ts of caring for native plants, with tips and tricks for weeding out unwanted.
Anthony founded Dropseed Native Landscapes to give Long Islanders the ability to transform their piece of the island into a native plant oasis to sustain both humans and wildlife alike.
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Prof Jonathan Lehrer is Chairperson at the Department of Horticulture and Urban Design at Farmingdale State College. New rewilders would much appreciate his excellent presentation on the basics of Long Island Ecology and Invasion Biology. Very accessible information about what makes a species a “weed” or “native” or “non-native” or “Invasive”. Also, which of these terms have a scientific basis and why do we care about these classifications
You’ve installed your native plant garden and now your plants need a little TLC to help them get established.
Native plants require less assiduous maintenance than comparable exotics. But like all other garden plants they do need to be watered and weeded.
In this post, Rebecca Vargas, a home gardener and native plant enthusiast, outlines the basic care and feeding of your native plant oasis!
Read MoreReWild works with expert Native Plant landscape designers to bring you ideas based on their years of experience.The ReWild Edible Garden featured in this post is by Kimberly Simmen, a native plant expert and owner of KMS Native Plants LLC. The design features berry bushes that are attractive to birds and humans. Get yours first if you can …
Read MoreReWild works with expert Native Plant landscape designers to bring you ideas based on their years of experience.The ReWild Wildflower Meadow featured in this post is by Kimberly Simmen, a native plant expert and owner of KMS Native Plants LLC, Long Island’s first year-round retail native plant garden center. The design features vibrant flowering perennials with year round pollinator interest for small spaces.
Read MoreReWild works with expert Native Plant landscape designers to bring you ideas based on their years of experience. The “Bee and Butterfly” Showy Sun Design from Rusty Schmidt, one of Long Island’s premier Landscape Ecologists, provides year-round interest with plants guaranteed to be blooming from late May well into October. Their contrasting colors and varying heights are designed to show off each in the verdant background of the others.
Read MoreReWild works with expert Native Plant landscape designers to bring you ideas based on their years of experience. The Cool and Vibrant Shade Design from Rusty Schmidt, one of Long Island’s premier Landscape Ecologists, provides year-round interest with plants guaranteed to be blooming from late May well into October. The garden is vibrant with plants that flower attractively despite the shade.
Read MoreEvery Fall, outside your door, there is a huge bonanza of nutrients for your garden and plants. Every year this is free and readily available . We are talking about leaves. Instead of raking, blowing, bagging and sending leaves to the landfill, they can be used the enrich the plants and soil. Since fall leaves contain a lot of carbon and other important micro nutrients they make great mulch, compost, and even lawn fertilizer.
Paul Merkelson who leads ReWild Compost Committee discusses how you can save yourself work and help your yard!
Read MoreJoyce Hostyn, an amazing ReWilder from Kingston, Ontario, had hosted a wonderful session on designing landscapes with native plants. We have her recorded session and links to more information in this blog post.
Joyce is a rewilder who dreams of city streets lined with fruit and nut trees, wild parks and wild yards. She sees each yard as a possibility space - one yearning to burst free from tightly controlled grass and foundation plantings to become a beautiful, biodiverse, magical wildscape populated with native species, edibles and companionable exotics. Raised on a farm where her family grew, foraged and preserved enough produce to last the year, Joyce now experiments with edible forest gardening on her lawn-free quarter acre lot (featured last summer in the Kingston-Whig Standard).
Read MoreReWilders have highly varying results when planting natives in their garden. A lucky few report 100% success, most of us are in-between, and an unfortunate few report all plants dying on them. This is not a matter of experience alone — there are very experienced gardeners who have known the desolation of plants that don’t come back up the following spring.
While we have not unlocked the keys to complete success, here are some tips that may help newcomers to native plant gardening have greater success.
And if you agree or disagree or want to add your tips or wisdom to this list, please email us with your ideas at info@rewildlongisland.org.
Read MoreCan you garden with no ground? Most people would be stopped in their tracks by tree roots choking up the back yard and not letting any plants come up. But not Angie Ng.
Angie took up gardening to relax and clear her mind. Over time she has added a number of delightful plants in containers, artistically arranged to great effect in her backyard. And now, she ReWilds with Containers in her beautiful backyard.
Read MoreThinking about how you are going to get a head start on that weed patch by the side of the house? Want to take out a piece of the lawn for a pollinator patch?
Well, an ounce of preparation is worth a ton of fixing.
One of the easiest ways to deal with a plot of land is to cardboard and mulch a few weeks before planting, so that you can maintain the new design without “old” plants or weeds popping their heads back up for the first year. By the second year, the cardboard and mulch are all gone, the new plants have reached maturity and are shading out any new competition easily!
Read MoreTired of watering, fertilizing, weeding and mowing the grass in the curb strip in front of your house? Well here is an amazing alternative: Creeping Phlox (phlox subulata).
Veteran gardener AnneMarie Ansel talks about why Phlox is a much superior alternative to grass on the median strip.
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