Are your flowers deer food?

When deer are very hungry they will eat almost anything, but during the growing season they usually have lots of options. That being the case, they often eat what they like best. Following is a list of trees, shrubs, perennial flowers, and annual flowers used by North Dakota gardeners. They are grouped according to…

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Our Little Neck of the Woods

Diagram of the Terpstra's bubbler that has attracted so many diverse birds

by Margy Terpstra In 1996, we were close to becoming empty nesters that had run out of projects, and had that itch to find a home with a bigger lot and more trees. We began searching. As soon as we walked through this house and onto the deck, I turned…

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Attracting Aerial Acrobats to Your Yard

by Cynthia Berger Published in National Wildlife, April/May 2002 When her kids went off to college, Kathy Biggs got rid of her backyard swimming pool. But her Sebastopol, California yard still buzzes with activity on warm summer afternoons, because Kathy replaced the pool with a dragonfly pond. Now, instead of kids…

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Case of the Collared Lizard

Condensed from: Science Daily (Aug. 22, 2011) Biologist Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., fell in love with the eastern collared lizard that lives in the hot, dry Ozark glades when he was 13. By the time he returned from graduate and postgraduate work, 75 percent of the lizard populations had vanished….

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Notes from the National Meeting

by Ed Schmidt The national annual meeting of Wild Ones was held at the national headquarters in Neenah, Wisconsin. The drive up takes about seven hours , so we left St. Louis at 6 a.m., arriving around 3, in time for introductions before the start of the formal annual meeting at…

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Missouri Numbers

Percentage of US landmass 2 Rank in number of native species 21 Major natural communities 16 Distinctive natural communities 85 Forest communities 15 Woodland communities 18 Annual value of wood harvesting & processing 3,000,000,000

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Milkweed caution

I want to share a cautionary tale from my mother, who is a native plant gardener and Wild Ones member in Kentucky.  Earlier this week, she cut some tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica).  Shortly afterwards, her eyes began to burn, and her vision gradually got blurry.  By the time she went…

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Butterfly Gardening in Wisconsin

Editor Note: Now, while we are adding to or otherwise improving our garden, here are some ideas on how to improve it for the fauna. From the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association (edited) Butterfly gardening adds beauty to your yard and provides habitat for butterflies. Much critical butterfly habitat has been…

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