Posts tagged sale
Milkweed & its Many Insect Visitors

Milkweed played such an important medicinal role in the Americas that in 1753 Carl Linneaus, the father of taxonomy, named the milkweed family after Asclepias, the Greek God of medicine.

As native plant enthusiasts, we all know and love our milkweed plants and the wonderful monarch butterflies they host.

But do you know other insects that find a home on your milkweed at different times of the year?

Rebecca Vargas goes through the different stages of milkweed and the fascinating insects that appear at different times on your plants.

Read More
Jannine's Backyard Pond and Native Garden

When Janine moved into her East Islip home 9 years ago, she always looked at this drab far corner of the yard and imagined a little pond there. It would be small and peaceful, with a sweet little waterfall and a few little goldfish. The idea was always too complicated, too expensive, and too difficult to attempt!

She says, “Enter 2020, Covid-19, home-schooling, murder hornets and quarantine. As a healthcare worker during the most unique and stressful time of my career, I decided there was no time like the present to expand my native pollinator garden …”

Read on to see the amazing transformation of Jannine’s yard even as she battled Covid on the front-lines as a health care worker while home-schooling her two daughters!

Read More
It's About Thyme: Get Rid of that Lawn!

Charles Maass is a Civil Engineer living in Manhasset on Long Island. He grew up in this lawn and tree loving community, and now lives with his wife and two sons. His interests include reading and triathlon training. Most importantly, he has always hated his turf grass lawn, and finally replaced it with a beautiful carpet of creeping thyme. Here is how he did it …

Read More
Layering Wildscapes in Your Garden [Video]

Joyce Hostyn, an amazing ReWilder from Kingston, Ontario, had hosted a wonderful session on designing landscapes with native plants. We have her recorded session and links to more information in this blog post.

Joyce is a rewilder who dreams of city streets lined with fruit and nut trees, wild parks and wild yards. She sees each yard as a possibility space - one yearning to burst free from tightly controlled grass and foundation plantings to become a beautiful, biodiverse, magical wildscape populated with native species, edibles and companionable exotics. Raised on a farm where her family grew, foraged and preserved enough produce to last the year, Joyce now experiments with edible forest gardening on her lawn-free quarter acre lot (featured last summer in the Kingston-Whig Standard).

Read More
New to Native Plant Parenthood? Read this ...

ReWilders have highly varying results when planting natives in their garden. A lucky few report 100% success, most of us are in-between, and an unfortunate few report all plants dying on them. This is not a matter of experience alone — there are very experienced gardeners who have known the desolation of plants that don’t come back up the following spring.

While we have not unlocked the keys to complete success, here are some tips that may help newcomers to native plant gardening have greater success.

And if you agree or disagree or want to add your tips or wisdom to this list, please email us with your ideas at info@rewildlongisland.org.

Read More
Container ReWilding: Angie's Beautiful Backyard

Can you garden with no ground? Most people would be stopped in their tracks by tree roots choking up the back yard and not letting any plants come up. But not Angie Ng.

Angie took up gardening to relax and clear her mind. Over time she has added a number of delightful plants in containers, artistically arranged to great effect in her backyard. And now, she ReWilds with Containers in her beautiful backyard.

Read More
Memories of Long Island: Randal Wolfer

Randal Wolfer, a long time Long Islander and Cornell Extension Master Gardener, recalls the steady loss of habitat and wildlife on Long Island. She writes, “I’ve been a Long Islander my entire life and can attest to the steady decline of our local insect and bird populations due to loss of habitat to lawns and formal gardens made up primarily of ornamental plants. While lovely to view, lawns provide no benefit to our native population of insects and animals, and use large quantities of water to keep them looking green. You won’t see insects butterflies or bees hanging around your lawn or ornamentals as they offer no nutritional value to them.”

Read More
Prepare for Planting - Cardboard and Mulch

Thinking about how you are going to get a head start on that weed patch by the side of the house? Want to take out a piece of the lawn for a pollinator patch?

Well, an ounce of preparation is worth a ton of fixing.

One of the easiest ways to deal with a plot of land is to cardboard and mulch a few weeks before planting, so that you can maintain the new design without “old” plants or weeds popping their heads back up for the first year. By the second year, the cardboard and mulch are all gone, the new plants have reached maturity and are shading out any new competition easily!

Read More
Peggy's Project : 10 Years and Not Done

Peggy Maslow is a devoted conservationist who volunteers for a wide variety of causes cutting across her beloved birds, native plants, science and eco-conservation. Her front yard is a beautiful testament to native plants, insects and birds. Peggy’s gardening philosophy is centered around allowing plants to find their own micro-niches, carefully observing what does well where and allowing design to develop over time. Her approach seems to indicate that ReWilding is less about instant gratification than patient unfolding.

Read More
Hooked on ReWilding : Joanne's Story

In 2019 Spring, Joanne Strongin signed up as a ReWild Pioneer and went through the entire process of carefully designing her yard with the expert assistance of Rusty Schmidt, Landscape Architect hired by ReWild Long Island to assist families. She carefully cleared the existing lawn, cardboarded, mulched and planted natives per design. Successful ReWilding definitely draws on good planning, execution and a massive dose of luck! Joanne was featured in a recent Newsday Story as a successful ReWilder

Read More