Uncommon Ground

By Betty Struckhoff Sarah Stein’s wonderful book, Noah’s Garden, is a must-read for anyone interested in native landscaping. One of her suggestions for suburban yards is to create hedgerows of native plants near the back property lines. Once neighbors pick up the idea, a connected series of these yards can…

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Got Trees?

Greg Hass has about 4,000,000 trees to sell. Greg, of course, is the Supervisor of the George O. White State Forest Nursery near Licking, Missouri. He is presently trying to retire. The difficulty is finding someone who can replace him. Interested in the job? You would only have to know…

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Got Bees?

How many birds can you name (common names are fine)?  20? 50? 100? All 350 described in the Birds of Missouri? What about butterflies? There are 324 species of butterflies in Butterflies and Moths of Missouri, but of course that only scratches the surface of butterfly species and only names…

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Bumblebees

From: http://www.xerces.org/native-bees/ Bumblebees are the only bees native to the US that are truly social. They live in colonies, share the work, and have multiple, overlapping generations throughout the spring, summer, and fall. However, unlike the non-native, European honeybees, the bumble bee colony is seasonal. At the end of the…

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Urban wildlife

From Ed July 4.  This morning while I was setting up the sprinkler in my vegetable garden and walking past the birdbath, there was a huge ruckus in my northernmost prairie bed (the one with the cup plant).  Moments later a deer cleared the fence at the rear of the…

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