Palmerton, PA Imagine my surprise when, on the last full day of my vacation in the mountains of the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania, I discovered that the town in which I had been staying, Palmerton, PA, was the site of one of the largest EPA Superfund clean-up sites east of the Mississippi River. This [...]
The Power of Doing Just One Thing in Your Ecosystem Garden
Imagine if Doing Just One Thing Could Really Make a Difference for Wildlife I know this sounds hokey, but it’s true. We could make a huge difference for our local wildlife if each of us chose just one item to do in our wildlife garden. Really. You don’t have to redesign the landscape of your [...]
Pat Sutton Talks about Butterfly Declines
Pat Sutton is an amazing naturalist and educator with a passion for teaching people to create welcoming habitats for wildlife in our gardens. Her own garden is a beautiful testament to this passion, as it is always full of swirling butterflies, diving hummingbirds, gorgeous Goldfinches, acrobatic dragonflies, and all manner of other life. This year, [...]
Butterfly numbers plunge by 50 percent
Butterfly lovers have noticed an alarming trend–butterfly numbers are down over 50 percent this year. The North American Butterfly Association (NABA) has sponsored butterfly counts since 1992, and has noted significant drops in butterfly populations this year. Pat Sutton is a founding member of NABA and has participated in these counts since their inception. To [...]
Conservation Gardening in Practice: Installing a Green Roof
Benefits of green roofs Green roofs, also called ecoroofs, vegetated roofs, and living roofs, offer a more sustainable alternative than traditional roofs because they provide several important environmental and economic benefits: They last up to twice as long as traditional roofs They slow the progression of rain into the stormwater system They mitigate urban heat [...]
I love nature, but I have no love for ticks!
Several weeks ago I went on a hunt for rare butterflies in South Jersey with my friend, Pat Sutton. As we bushwhacked through abandoned cranberry bogs in search of butterfly denizens of such locations, I began to notice that we were covered with ticks. Eeeew! Confession time: I have to admit that as much as [...]
Butterfly Gardening for Monarchs: Got Milkweed?
An Amazing Migratory Phenomenon Every year 100 million Monarch butterflies make an extraordinary journey, some of them traveling all the way from Canada to the Transvolcanic Mountains in Mexico, where they will spend the winter. In the spring they will mate and head north once again. The female will fly until she locates a patch [...]
What does Conservation Gardening mean?
Conservation Gardening Conservation Gardening views every property — whether a small residential backyard or acres of woodland or the grounds surrounding your business– as an ecosystem. If each of us takes personal responsibility for the health of the wildlife on our property, we can improve the health of our planet. Because habitat loss due to [...]
Why Your Garden is so Important for Ecosystem Gardening
Habitat Loss due to Human Action is the Number One Cause of Species Decline We humans have an extraordinary propensity for building new things: shopping centers, malls, condos, office parks, suburban subdivisions, roads, parking lots, etc. This need to have more and more is really not a great situation for the wildlife that were thriving [...]
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