Puddock Hill Journal #10: Battling Invasives While Helping Natives The plants in every ecosystem are constantly at war, and it’s a war of attrition. I find it helpful to consider this simple observation when figuring out how best to battle invasive species and promote natives. Nothing in nature is static. Until about 800 million years […]
Tag: native plants
Good Fences Make Good Natives
Puddock Hill Journal #8: Deer Fences and Consequences A couple months ago, I came across an article published by the Yale School of the Environment on “How the Boom in Fences Is Harming Wildlife.” While the article focused mostly on expansive fences disrupting large landscapes such as the desert at our southern border, the Mongolian […]
A Judicious War on Invasives
Puddock Hill Journal #7: Backyard Stewardship Is a Group Effort Life is a group effort. I am reminded of that fact whenever I cast my gaze around Puddock Hill. This time of year, when I sit writing on the front porch on sunny afternoons I see painted turtles gathered by the dozen to bask on […]
Finding Stewardship
Puddock Hill Journal – Entry #3: My first pond teaches me. My experience with environmental stewardship began when we were living in Bedford Hills, New York, in Westchester County back in the nineties. At the beginning of that decade, we bought our first property outside the city: ten acres of lawn, fields and woods; an […]
The Steward’s Anticipation
Puddock Hill Journal – Entry #2: Pay no attention to those mating toads. We just experienced two summery warm days here in the Brandywine Valley, but while the grass has greened and early spring ephemerals have begun showing off, I’m mostly still looking at a landscape of browns. Anticipation is the gardener’s dominant emotion this […]