As spring approaches, what can you do in your garden to support critical habitat? When can you safely move the leaves that have protected the bees and caterpillars and lightning bugs that have overwintered in your soil? And what is the best timing for cleaning out last year’s plant stems? Learn how your actions, from initial design to seasonal maintenance, support beneficial wildlife.

Have a fascination for butterflies that are native to Long Island? You will not see them if you have conventional landscaping like lawns or concrete. But with just a few strategically selected native plants, you will attract and help butterfiles to your home.

Butterflies’ nutritional needs evolve throughout their life cycle. Join Kim Simmen to learn about metamorphosis and how you can attract beautiful butterflies to your Long Island, NY yard with a few strategically selected native plants.

Want a juicy garden bursting with ripe fruit and vegetables? Inviting the right pollinators in the right season makes a huge difference to the quantity of fruits and vegetables, as also their size, shape and juiciness!

In this video blog, Raju Rajan, President of ReWild Long Island, talks about how native perennials as companion plants makes so much sense. These plants provide nectar, pollen, habitat, protection and host services for pollinators. In essense, you are growing your own native bees alongside your vegetables and fruits!

As many know, Fall is a great time to plant native perennials in your yard. They go dormant over winter and come back strong in Spring and beyond.

If you are new to native plants and need help getting started, the wide variety of plants available and information can be overwhelming.

Experienced horticulturist Kim Simmen and avid native plant gardener Rebecca Vargas, both Rewild board members present an introductory session on garden preparation and native plant selection. No prior experience is required as Kimberly and Rebecca walk through the process, the plants, the planting and maintenance.

Prof Jonathan Lehrer is Chairperson at the Department of Horticulture and Urban Design at Farmingdale State College.

He presented the basics of Long Island Ecology and Invasion Biology to the student volunteers at the Summer Program To Fight Hunger and Climate Change yesterday. New rewilders would much appreciate this excellent presentation on the basics of terms such as “weed”, “native”, “invasive” and “naturalized”.

You don’t need a lot of space to create a big buzz with pollinators and other wildlife. Whether you have a small yard, or just want to convert a portion of a larger space, a Postage Stamp Prairie is the answer. Also known as Pocket Prairies, these small plantings have the ability to recreate the Maritime Grassland plant communities that once dominated large portions of Long Island, providing you with an attractive, biodiverse garden filled with color and life.

Anthony Marinello, a permaculture & rewilding expert, presents this session for new and experienced rewilders alike.

Are you new to native plants and need help getting started? The wide variety of plants available and the overwhelming information available can make your initial forays a little intimidating. Kimberly Simmen, an experienced horticulturist, presents an introductory guide to starting a pollinator garden.

Watch the video of the talk that Kimberly gave on March 23, 2021 over zoom.

You’ve installed your native plant garden and now your plants need a little TLC to help them get established.

Native plants require less assiduous maintenance than comparable exotics. But like all other garden plants they do need to be watered and weeded.

In this post, Rebecca Vargas, a home gardener and native plant enthusiast, outlines the basic care and feeding of your native plant oasis!

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!

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 …

Did you know you can compost your kitchen scraps and yard trimmings right in your backyard?You don't need any fancy equipment (although there are benefits to an enclosed system). Successful composting at home is all about making the beneficial microbes that live in a composting pile happy. Like us, theyneed air, water, and food.

Brenda Platt, the director of the Composting for Community Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance shared the basics and tips to getting started for the ReWild Long Island Community, and answered questions.

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).

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.

Phyllis Sickerman, a long term gardener and resident of Port Washington, NY, who started gardening 26 years ago primarily for nice curb appeal on her beautiful prominent front yard. Over time, she realized there was much more and moved on to perennial gardening. She says, “Gardening has become an Important part of my life providing me with an opportunity to bond with Mother Nature as well as helping and preserving Mother Earth!”

On the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22nd, Phyllis shares her rewilding experiences so that those starting out can be assured that earth care and curb appeal can definitely go together!

Don’t throw away good food … or even bad food. Food scraps and yard waste need to be kept out of the landfill where they can contribute up to 20% of greenhouse gas emissions. That is also great organic matter that could go back into your garden helping raise your spring flowers or spring onions!

Raju and Paul have recently started experimenting with indoor food waste recycling using the Bokashi technique. This is an indoor fermentation method for creating compostable matter without any flies, smell, rodents or fuss …

Mindy Marcus is a long-time Long Island resident, and a Master Gardener. She and her husband Michael grow ornamental plants, a vegetable garden and have been adding Native plants to their gardens. They have a son Joey who in October of 2010 finished his Eagle Scout Beautification Project, at the Welcome to Hicksville Site on the corner of Levittown Parkway and Old Country Road. The family has upkept the site and adding plants and flowers since. Native plants as Joe Pye, Mountain Mint and Black-eyed Susan’s have been added to bring the pollinators and birds to the area and keep it a site of beauty and honor, to recognize all who serve.

Mindy reflects on her long road to ReWilding and what she learned on the way …

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.

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.”

Margaret and Charlie DeSiervo are long time gardeners and advocates of sustainable practices. They ReWilded their yards in the past fall and reflect on the experience of designing, researching plants, preparing the yard, planting and then waiting for results. What worked for them and what did not?

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!

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

Tired of watering, fertilizing, weeding and mowing the grass in the curb strip in front of your house? Well here is an amazing alternative: Creeping Phlox (phlox subulata).

Veteran gardener AnneMarie Ansel talks about why Phlox is a much superior alternative to grass on the median strip.