There is always that area in your landscape that is shaded. These areas can be frustrating, because they don’t grow turf well leaving the soil bare. Here are a few good shade plants to spruce up that dark corner of your garden. Columbine, Aquliegia canadensis Delicate but tough wildflower for the shade garden. Flowers are red […]
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One of the themes this spring for planting is diversity. By planting a diversity of wildflowers and grasses in your garden, you will attract many different forms of wildlife, including pollinators and birds. A wide variety of plants blooming at different times of the year will provide interest and beauty throughout the growing season. As we have […]
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Interest in native landscaping is growing in popularity. This time of year leading up to our spring plant sale, homeowners and businesses contemplate what they would like their landscape to look like. They desire a garden that captures the essence of the prairie, a landscape that creates a sense of place. Nature gives us such […]
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Every spring I marvel at the changing landscape, especially prairies that have been burned. A seemingly lifeless and brown prairie is turned black by fire and reduced to ashes. This important process removes last year’s growth, allowing the sun to warm the soil. This warmth is just what native wildflowers and grasses need to emerge […]
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An important disturbance mechanism for prairie ecosystem health, a restoration ritual that connects a Kansan to its native landscape, and a series of sights, sounds and smells that both comforts and stirs heightened senses – prairie burning in the spring represents all these things to me. Ever since participating in my first prairie burns during […]
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Amsonia hubrichtii, the threadleaf bluestar, is one of my favorite plants. It was not well known among gardeners until the Perennial Plant Association named it the 2011 Plant of the Year. The species was discovered in 1942 by Leslie Hubricht growing in the Ouachita Mountains in central Arkansas. The species was later named in her […]
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Vines are underutilized in nearly every garden, in my opinion, including here at the arboretum. It may be that we don’t have the structures to support them and show off their attributes, or we are unfamiliar with how to grow them. Either way they need to be used more. In fact, I think vines are […]
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The other day, I began transplanting seedlings of Fremont’s Clematis for our FloraKansas spring plant sale. I was thrilled that we actually will have some to offer this year. In the past, we have struggled to achieve germination, but this year we have been successful. The seed from which these plants germinated was collected last […]
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Monarchs ingest toxic cardiac glycosides when their larvae eat milkweed leaves and advertise through their adult warning coloration: “look out for me…I’m poisonous!” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may very soon be issuing its own warning on behalf of declining populations for this bright butterfly under the banner of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). […]
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Our soil here in Kansas is gumbo. Not the delicious soup, but heavy clay. It is clay all the time and all the time it is clay. I have tried to describe it to others, but it needs to be experienced. They may say they have something similar, but for us who endure it and […]
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