By Betty Struckhoff Our Wild Ones annual landscape makeover has become one of those markers in my mind’s clockwork — marking a changing season and another year. Always close to the fall equinox, we gather (like Druids?!) to dig in the dirt. This year was no exception. On September 27, 2014 Scott…
By Marilyn Chryst It was a cold winter night in 1999; there were snow flurries in the air. Yet 8 people showed up at the wood shop of Shaw Arboretum (now Shaw Nature Reserve) for a meeting of the newly formed St. Louis Chapter of Wild Ones. We were there…
The emerald ash borer (EAB), which is destroying ash trees in a large swath of the nation, has apparently spread to a different tree, according to a researcher at Wright State University in Ohio. Professor Don Cipollini has found that the invasive green beetle has apparently begun to attack white…
By Mitch Leachman September 27th was a beautiful day to be outside and even better if you found yourself sharing native plants with folks! The first ever Bring Conservation Home Native Plant Expo and Sale (originally called a swap) at the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood was a great success, with…
By Nathan Zenser My parents cut down the dreaded sweetgum tree… tired of picking up gum balls. They now need a tree replacement for the north side of the house. The site gets sun and is somewhat dry. They are looking for a mid-size tree. I have done research and…
By Betty Struckhoff Watching kids find little critters in pond water, some of them using a microscope, all under the helpful eyes of a docent made me think I could have been at Shaw Nature Reserve. But I was in the middle of London, one of the biggest, most densely…
By Mitch Leachman We had another fantastic year made possible by thousands of hours of service given by hundreds of volunteers just like you! Specifically, nearly 600 folks came out for 14 stewardship projects including the installation of over 1,600 native plants and the clearing or maintenance of bush honeysuckle on…
By Marilyn Chryst “Follow the Herd to Prairie Day” is a great motto. Every other year, Shaw Nature Reserve (SNR) and Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) jointly sponsor Prairie Day. This year it’s Saturday, Sept 20th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at SNR. It’s a really fun day, especially for kids,…
By James C. Trager, Ph.D. / Restoration Biologist / Shaw Nature Reserve An article from the Wild Ones Journal – lays out the issues regarding planting tropical milkweed for monarch butterflies, and suggests a solution to the possible issue of causing increase protozoan parasite infection, namely, mowing patches of this plant down…
By Sue Leahy When invitations came my way toward the end of last year to host a Wild Ones meeting and be on the Master Gardener tour, I decided that since we were going to “spruce up” the gardens for these tours that I would host an open house for the…
