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Posted by Adrian Ayres Fisher

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Celebrating Wildflowers (USFS)

Center for Humans and Nature

Center for Neighborhood Technology

Chicago Botanic Garden

Chicago Wilderness

Cook County Forest Preserve Volunteer Info

Dr. John Hilty: Illinois Wildflowers

Garfield Park Conservatory

Illinois Natural History Survey

Invasive Plant Atlas of the U. S.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Midwest Invasive Plant Network

Morton Arboretum

Native Seed Gardeners (Illinois)

Nature Conservancy Illinois

Quaker Earthcare Witness

Sustainable Sites Initiative

Thatcher Woods Savanna Restoration Project

Tree of Life Web Project

USA National Phenology Network

USDA Plants Database

vPlants--Virtual Chicago Area Herbarium

Wild Ones Native Plants, Natural Landscapes

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Carbon Gardening: A Natural Climate Solution that Can Help Reduce CO2 Emissions While Restoring Biodiversity

Winter and summer, the native plant gardens at the UW Arboretum sequester carbon while adding beauty and habitat. Designed by Darrel Morrison. Gardeners new to the concept of carbon gardening often ask these two questions: What good soil management strategies will help maximize carbon sequestration? And, what would be a good plant palette to help accomplish this? Good questions both, to which I wish I could give detailed, specific answers. Carbon gardening in northern Illinois, where I live, differs from carbon gardening in other regions; each will require region-specific strategies and plant palettes. Everything depends on where the gardener lives and the conditions in which they are gardening. Thus, what follows is more in the way of a general discussion that might help point in the right direction than a series of rigid prescriptions. Organic carbon sequestration is one of the oldest tricks in nature’s ancient playbook for global ecosystem regulation. These days, as we se

Backyard Carbon Sequestration: What Does Synthetic Fertilizer Have to Do with It?

Part two of a series exploring how regenerative gardening techniques can enhance carbon storage while improving soil health. In part one I discussed some of the principles behind the factors involved in soil health and how plants and the soil biological community work together to store carbon and build appropriate fertility. “Why Not Start Today: Backyard Carbon Sequestration Is Something Nearly Everyone Can Do” can be found here. A brief digression about the term “regenerative gardening” So what is regenerative gardening, anyway? Regenerative gardening is an umbrella term that embraces many styles and traditions of organic cultivation and adds explicit intentionality regarding carbon sequestration. The recent Rodale white paper, “Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change,” says that, “regenerative organic agriculture refers to working with nature to utilize photosynthesis and healthy soil microbiology to draw down greenhouse gases.” The same goes for gardening. Like r

All Kinds of Nightshade

"Deadly nightshade:" a name that makes me glad for Latin nomenclature Purple flower Easy post, I thought. Just write about the deadly nightshade. I happened to be thinking about the perennial, semi-woody, weedy vine that lurks along my property boundaries, and climbs up through the links of the fence. It can grow to six feet and the leaves have distinctive “ears” at the base. Its purple flowers bloom in summer, and the berries ripen to an alluring red. Warned as a child not to eat the berries or leaves, I've been pulling it my entire gardening life. A little research informed me that this plant is also called bittersweet nightshade, or Solanum dulcamara .

Native Shrubs and Why They're Essential for Carbon Sequestration

Sand prairie merging into shrubland in southeast Wisconsin. Credit: The Prairie Botanist “Shrubbiness is such a remarkable adaptive design that one may wonder why more plants have not adopted it.” (H. C. Stutz, 1989) In light of the newest IPCC and US climate change reports, coupled with reports of the ongoing declines of wild species—birds, insects—you name them, just so long as they aren’t human, I have turned to thinking about shrubs. It is precisely their adaptive characteristics that give shrubs their potential to be powerful players in soil carbon sequestration and ecosystem regeneration in certain parts of the world, such as the Midwest. Although alarming, the reports are not surprising to anyone who’s been keeping track. The IPCC report says human global society has 12 years to reduce carbon emissions to 45% below 2010 levels if there is to be any hope of holding overall average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). The US report, searchable by re

Let's Talk About Bees

Buttersafe, January 4, 2011 Our bee problem is quite the topic of conversation these days--at social gatherings, in meetings, over coffee. Everyone agrees we should save the bees, though many of us think of them in the abstract as little buzzing yellow flying things, maybe as cartoon characters, or as creatures that exist to help us . I could say, and have—for example at Christmas dinner when apologizing for my not-quite-stellar pumpkin bread—that last summer the CSA grower from whom I get my produce planted five hundred pumpkin plants and only got three pumpkins (so I had to buy canned, rather than processing my own). No pollination, he thought. And just the other day an acquaintance mentioned that friends who live in a tony suburb north of Chicago had, also last summer, had their own pollination troubles in their vegetable garden. Why? she wondered.

The Polyculture Lawn: A Primer

Bee in Creeping Charlie During a recent conservation/climate change seminar, I happened to comment about the relationship of home gardens to natural areas; how we need to cease thinking of nature as being something over there , while our private yards and gardens are treated as separate; and how our gardens can help sequester carbon. Afterward, a woman came up to me, someone who had spoken knowledgeably about habitats, biodiversity of prairies, and the difference between C4 and C3 plant species. “Without using herbicides,” she said, “What am I to do about the creeping Charlie in my lawn? I just hate it.” A fellow gardener and I tried to explain: a polyculture lawn is ok—herbiciding creeping Charlie not worth the environmental cost (besides which it’s nearly indestructible)—it’s easy to pull up—it mostly grows in shady areas where grass has difficulty—bees like the flowers—looks nice in spring—don’t fight it…Well, she wasn’t going to hand weed it, thought she was allergic to it an

The Beauty of Thoughtful Neglect: Spring Garden Care in the Ecological Garden

Native wild ginger emerges in April Why leaves should stay where they are and “Chop and drop” tidying Back in March, shortly after the Covid-19 shutdown began in Illinois, I was on a zoom meeting with some other native plant gardeners when we got on the subject of spring clean-up. “What does that even mean in the ecological garden?” someone asked. Should it be called clean-up, when what we’re doing more resembles editing, rearranging, and augmenting, with very little clean-up involved? How does the native plant, pollinator and wildlife-friendly (not to mention soil carbon sequestering) gardener help their plot emerge from winter into the growing season? Because I have had more time at home and in the garden, I began to take notes of what it is I actually do. We all know what conventional spring clean-up looks like here in the Midwest and across the country. It is exemplified by what occurs in April and May in the townhome complex where my sister resides, ruled by the homeowners’ ass

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