Guest Posting at ConservationGardening.com
As some of you know, the past few months have been a challenge for me, slowly recovering from a badly broken leg, but the silver lining of my recovery is that I've had lots of time to read, write and spend time in cyberspace. Along the way, I've 'met' some great people who share my passion for earth-friendly gardening. Carole Brown, who has a website and blog called Ecosystem Gardening, invited me to showcase our habitat garden in a guest posting this week. Click here to read my guest posting about our habitat landscaping on

Where are the Monarchs?
Where oh where have the Monarch butterflies gone? I heard this question many times this past summer. Mostly, it seems the weather was to blame, at least in New England. Butterflies need sun and warmth in order to fly, and they need to fly to locate Milkweed plants to lay their eggs. Their wings are like little solar chargers, soaking up the sun to fuel their flight. This year's cold and rainy weather in New England provided few opportunities for female Monarchs to fly to areas containing Milkweed plants (Asclepias species), which is the only plant that Mona

Nature's Highlights (Frost in the Garden)
Anybody who has taken one of my classes knows that I always harp on about NOT doing the traditional fall cleanup of the garden...instead of scalping your perennial beds to the ground in fall and removing most of the dead plant material, I persuade my students to leave plant stems standing right into the winter, and delay the cleanup til the following spring. Seed heads provide valuable forage for those birds who spend the winter here, and the leaf litter, hollow plant stems and decaying plant materials all provide plenty of opportunities for beneficial insects to hibernate through the winter in some form. Remember, many of those bugs are are the superheroes of the insect world, who will wak

Backyard Habitat in Autumn...part two
Nature continues to take center stage in central Massachusetts this week, with American Beech foliage stealing the show: Our habitat pond is a relaxing place to drink in the view and look for frogs, before they dig themselves into the pond's muddy bottom for the winter: Ornamental shrubs against a backdrop of mature trees creates a layered look on a steep north-facing slope:

Backyard Habitat in Autumn
As any New England 'leaf peeper' will tell you, there's a unique beauty to the annual decay of our natural surroundings. Our Massachusetts backyard, landscaped as a natural habitat, takes on a whole new life in the autumn, when berries ripen, plant stems are loaded down with seeds and the songbirds that eat them, and foliage changes to its fall plumage of earth tones. I always love the contrast of the earliest changing plants (usually ferns) which are a harbinger of the symphony of color still to come: Below: Possum-haw Viburnum (Viburnum n