Today’s Friday Film features an inside look at the New Wild Garden from the 2011 Chelsea RHS Flower Show designed by Nigel Dunnett filmed by Dusty Gedge. The garden features a great many elements for wildlife including a stone wall for habitat with built-in insect shelters as well as an insect wall for solitary bees and [...]
Last year when I wrote about the Northwest Flower and Garden Show I talked a lot about how the gardens didn’t feature wildlife habitat, but could have easily done so and I featured specific examples. I also expressed hope that a nature organization would partner on a display garden. This year, my hope was realized [...]
News Bloomin’ lovely gardens brighten up London’s East End:: A competition for residents of London’s East End, the winners were chosen for showing “ what they can do with plants, wildlife and the environment.” Can biodiversity be accommodated in today’s urban environment?:: Posing the question, this piece from The Ecologist looks at recent efforts including the International [...]
Common Name: Eight-spotted Skimmer Scientific Name: Libellula forensis Family: Libellulidae The Eight-spotted Skimmer is a common urban dragonfly that can be found in many parks, wetlands and other landscapes with water. Their range includes the Pacific Northwest, northern California and east to the Rockies. The Skimmer family is the largest odonate family and also among the dragonflies [...]
News Unleashing the Scientist in the Student:: A fantastic citizen science project enlists seventh grade students to help study salamanders in New York City. WA prison inmates raise imperiled butterflies:: This is an interesting story about local inmates trained with raising butterflies in a prison greenhouse to be released. This is a great program to help prevent [...]
This past summer produced a large number of wildlife species on my city balcony. I’ve briefly written about my balcony in the past, but this year I had more plants, the older ones were more established and I surveyed the wildlife with a new hand lens. You can read some of my past balcony posts [...]
News A bird sanctuary in the city:: This is a really interesting look at habitat on the Ateneo Loyola Heights campus in Manila in the Philippines with a surprising number of birds found just steps from the buildings on campus. It also acts as one of the few green corridors in the city and as a valuable educational tool [...]
Bugs In The System: Insects And Their Impact On Human Affairs by May R. Berenbaum is a fantastic guide to the world of insects. Not only does it introduce basics of insect biology and behavior, it also delves into the fascinating world of cultural entomology and their impact on humans. It’s a great overview on [...]
There are certain plants that are distinctly Pacific Northwest such as the iconic Douglas Fir tree, noticeable for it’s looming forest presence, the Oregon-grape, known for its bright-yellow flowers, and Snowberry, easy to spot because of its white berries. There is one Pacific Northwest perennial plant easily noticeable from a distance, not by its flowers or [...]
Once in awhile there are certain books that come along that every home library must have. Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat is one of those books that should sit on every shelf. It has solidly placed itself as the reference book for designing [...]
Lacewings are in the order Neuroptera, which also includes about 5,000 species worldwide, and Chrysoperla carnea is the most common species found throughout the United States. They are voracious predators of many insect species including aphids, caterpillars, thrips, mites, mealybugs and almost everything else with a soft body. There are many species of green lacewings, as well [...]
As honeybee populations suffer from colony collapse disorder, some people are looking to our native bees to see how they can fill in. Dave Hunter from Crown Bees is one of those people. I recently took a class from him about raising mason bees and learned a great deal about why we should raise mason [...]