A Way to Garden

IF WE’RE shopping for native plants with the most ecological impact—ones with the most pollinator appeal, for example—then simply choosing by the prettiest picture on a label or by a catalog photo won’t get you to your goal. It helps to understand the vocabulary of natives words like straight species and ecotype and selection and cultivar. Especially with cultivars—the cultiv...

BOTH GARDENERS and their plants have to be more resilient than ever these days in our changing climate it seems. At the High Line in New York City, one of the best-known naturalistic gardens anywhere, that’s especially so, since it’s built on the preposterous site of a former rail line, 30 feet above street level, meaning a plant must be an exceptional performer to make the g...

I’M PRIVILEGED to observe a fascinating diversity of animals outside where I live, but the term “Outsider Animals” was new to me. It’s the title of a recent book by today’s guest, Marlene Zuk, a leading expert in behavioral evolution and a professor at the University of Minnesota. The book’s subtitle is “How the Creatures at the Margins of Our Lives Have the Most to Teach Us”...

I ALWAYS SAY that birds taught me to garden as I watched their behavior and added more of the plants and features they seem to like and use most. And I’ve been blessed to have a diversity of avian visitors over many years. One place I’ve long turned for all kinds of information about birds is Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And lately among their many educational resources, they’...

WE TALK ABOUT pollinator gardens, and seek out the plants that provide that essential nourishment to bees and butterflies and moths, for example. But insects do not live by pollen alone. To make our gardens places of life-sustaining habitat, we have to provide for other needs, too—like water, for instance, and shelter in each season of the year and more. A new book called “Na...