How to Read Your Garden Before You Change It There is something about fall that makes gardeners want to make plans. The flowers are fading. Plants that once filled every corner are beginning to lean, dry, and disappear. Spaces we barely noticed in July suddenly seem obvious. Maybe a planting feels too crowded. Maybe another
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How to Add Native Shrubs to an Existing Landscape Adding native plants to an established landscape does not always mean creating another flower bed. Sometimes the most useful addition is a shrub. A native shrub can quietly solve several garden challenges at once. It can give height to a planting that feels too flat, soften
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How to Divide and Move Native Perennials in Fall There comes a point in almost every established native garden when something begins to feel a little crowded. A clump that once fit comfortably beside the path has slowly widened. A plant you loved in one corner would solve a problem beautifully somewhere else. Perhaps one
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The Best Michigan Native Plants for Fall Color Fall Color Is More Than Flowers There is a moment in a Michigan garden when summer begins to loosen its hold. The days are still warm enough to spend outside, bees may still be moving among the last flowers, and a few late bloomers are doing their
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How to Create Spaces Where Wildlife Feels Safe Michigan Garden Article No. 48 A garden can be filled with native flowers and still feel surprisingly exposed. There may be nectar for butterflies, seeds for birds, and water nearby, yet wildlife visits only briefly. A chickadee drops onto a seed head and disappears. A butterfly pauses
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How to Create Garden Rooms with Native Plants Your Garden Doesn’t Have to Be Seen All at Once One of the most interesting gardens I know is not a garden you can understand from the driveway. You have to walk into it. A planting partially hides a bench. A path curves beyond a group of
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Why Fall Is One of the Best Times to Plant Michigan Native Plants Spring may receive most of the gardening attention, but it is not the only season for new beginnings. By early fall, the garden has already revealed a great deal. You can see where a plant disappeared, where neighboring plants never quite filled
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How to Let Your Native Garden Fill in Naturally A newly planted native garden often asks something difficult of us. Patience. We plant young perennials, grasses, and shrubs with an image in our minds of the mature garden they will someday become. But in the beginning, there may be a lot of visible soil. Plants
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The Best Native Plants That Feed Goldfinches There are few garden visitors quite as cheerful as an American Goldfinch. That flash of bright yellow moving between flowers can stop you in your tracks, especially when a goldfinch lands on a seed head and begins feeding only a few feet away. But if you want goldfinches
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How to Help Monarch Butterflies During Migration in Michigan There are moments in the garden that seem almost too brief to notice. A warm August afternoon. The gentle movement of Little Bluestem in the breeze. Purple Coneflowers beginning to fade into seedheads. Then, almost without warning, a monarch butterfly drifts into view. It doesn’t hurry.
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