Tag Archives: Native

GROW NATIVE MA ANNUAL PLANT SALE – JOIN ME JUNE 1st!

Help Massachusetts communities and wildlife thrive by joining me at the annual Grow Native Massachusetts Plant Sale. You’ll find over 2,000 plants covering 120 varieties, and I (and other experts) can help you make smart selections for the particular conditions of your planting area. Just look for me in a blue volunteer apron from 8-11. Shop early for best selection.

From 9-2:30 at the UMass Waltham Field Station at 240 Beaver Street, Waltham 02452, you may find:

  • Perennials sorted by sun, shade and part-shade, and all types of soil conditions
  • A large selection of evergreen and deciduous ferns
  • Grasses and sedges, both cool and warm season
  • Trees and shrubs at small sizes so you can take home in your car. Native trees and shrubs do the most to increase biodiversity and to enhance the wildlife value of your landscapes.

AND new for this year: sweet goldenrod (Solidago odora), bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia) and spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata)—custom grown just for this sale, as these are top native herbaceous plants for supporting the entire life cycles of our butterfly and moth pollinator friends, and a whole lot of bees’, too.

All plants are native to the eastern United States—the majority indigenous to New England

Learn more: https://www.grownativemass.org/programs/plantsale
Download a list of the species available at the 2019 Native Plant Sale

 

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TWO CHICKADEES WALK INTO A BAR…IN A SHARON FOREST

Carol Lundeen and Brenda Minihan as black-capped chickadees in the Sharon Garden Club's January 2019 presentation about the ecological harm of exotic invasive plants

Sharon Garden Club January 2019 program “Wanted Dead: Not Alive!” presenters Carol Lundeen, left, and Brenda Minihan take the role of a pair of black-capped chickadees in a skit that tells the tale of how the introduction of beautiful exotic invasive plants by early American landscape designers has had terribly destructive results for native wildlife and our local, regional, and national natural resources. Ellen Schoenfeld-Beeks, not pictured, played the role of landscape designer “Fredericka” Law Olmstead in introducing the exotic plants to our country. Photo courtesy Marcia Podlisny.
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GRADUATION DAY from the NEW ENGLAND WILDFLOWER SOCIETY!

Garden-911 Boston owner Carol Lundeen graduates with Advanced Certificate in Native Plant Horticulture and Design

Carol Lundeen graduates from the New England Wildflower Society with an Advanced Certificate in Native Plant Horticulture an Design on November 3, 2018. Executive Director Debbi Edelstein presents Carol with her certificate.

One of my passions is lifelong learning, and another is to help people — and plants — who appreciate sustainable garden design and maintenance. I’m proud to have continued my studies at the New England Wildflower Society and earned an Advanced Certificate in Native Plant Horticulture an Design.

Each graduate had the opportunity to make a presentation about the required community service aspect of their certificate. I was proud to share my story of one of the two eyesore sites that I re-designed (and helped to install) at the Easton Town Offices that had been long overdue for a landscape makeover.

Easton MA Town Offices landscape makeover of traffic circle

Easton MA Town Offices traffic circle landscape makeover by the Easton Garden Club. Several civic sites in Easton had become eyesores, and the Easton Garden Club collaborated with the community to sponsor a Design Challenge to spur interest in giving the sites a landscape makeover. Blueview Nurseries of Norton donated prizes. Garden club member and Garden-911 Boston owner Carol Lundeen re-designed this site, and it was installed with the town’s robust support.

I’m excited to continue to be a valuable resource in my community. While I currently serve as Horticulture Co-Chair with both the Sharon and Easton, MA garden clubs, I look forward to future opportunities to collaborate, create and educate people about smart, sustainable landscapes.

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DAYLILY DIVING SWALLOWTAIL BUTTERFLY

Female eastern swallowtail butterfly taking nectar from a daylily in Worcester, Vt

An eastern north america native female eastern tiger swallowtail butterrfly, Papilio glaucus, crawls deep into the flower cone of a daylily to drink nectar at a friend’s garden in Worcester, VT.

How fun to watch a swallowtail butterfly dive into a daylily for a drink of sweet nectar. On the way in its wings became streaked with pollen, which the butterfly then took to and pollinated a neighboring daylily in seeking more nectar.

No daylily is native to North America as thus their value to native pollinators is limited to providing food rather than providing food, ideal egg-laying sites and food for their caterpillars that would support this butterfly species’ entire life cycle. Most native butterlies and moths have just one type of plant that is the host plant for their entire life cycle.

Native plants support not just native butterflies, but also all living things in native ecosystems, including humans, which is just one reason to have a diversity of native plants on your property or property that you manage or care for.

While daylilies have good horticultural value as colorful flowers, native plants have both horticultural and ecological value in the landscape. There are many fine native plant substitutes for non-native plants, and I encourage you to explore the possibilities before investing in non-native plants that could take the place of high-performing native plants.

 

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THE JOY OF A TULIP TREE IN YOUR LANDSCAPE

Liriodendron tulipifera flower, a tulip-shaped flower on the large native tulip tree.

LOOKING FOR A LARGE, STRAIGHT-TRUNKED FLOWERING NATIVE TREE FOR YOUR LANDSCAPE? Consider a tulip tree for your design, Liriodendron tulipifera. It grows up to 200 feet in height, and features yellow and orange tulip-shaped flowers and leaves. I came across this one at Stodderd’s Neck State Park in Hingham, MA, an off-leash dog park overlooking Weymouth Back River.

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GROW NATIVE MA HOSTS INTERNATIONAL AWARD WINNING LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM

Landscape architect Matthew Cunningham presented at Evenings with Experts, co-sponsored by Grow Native Massachusetts and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects.

International award winning landscape architect Matthew Cunningham presented at Evenings with Experts, on April 4th. Co-sponsored by Grow Native Massachusetts and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects, his design bring a sense of nature to his clients’ homes, creating a sense of privacy and wildness through the use of hard-working, beautiful native plants.

Last night, international award winning landscape architect Matthew Cunningham presented Revealing a Sense of Place at Grow Native Massachusetts’ Evenings with Experts talk at the Cambridge Public Library. The humble, approachable Matthew presented before-and-after profiles of several design projects he’s taken on, from a rocky, tide-swept cove in Maine to suburban West Newton and Brookline. In all cases, he borrowed concepts from nature, incorporating native plant communities into his designs, creating a sense of privacy and wildness for his clients.

The most thrilling part for me was his satellite photo of Cambridge, MA pointing out his first client there. The next slide showed that the neighbors have caught on, and now his clients are dotted all over town, creating a growing quilt of properties that support wildlife and pollinators, manage and filter rain water, and provide numerous other ecosystem services that only native plants can provide…including services for clients who disdain tree huggers and care primarily for aesthetics.

Keeping up with the Joneses now means people are investing in native plants, and it turns out that native plants don’t make a mess in your yard. They actually create a robust landscape system that hums on its own. This is the kind of news that inspires and delights me, and we could all use good news these days.

 

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TOP 100 NATIVE PLANTS FOR NEW ENGLAND GARDENS

Cover of Native Plants for New England Gardens

Congratulations to Mark Richardson and Dan Jaffe on publishing their extensive observations and close up photographs of their top 100 New England native plants. I’ve studied with them dozens of times while earning a certificate in native plant horticulture and design at the New England Wildflower Society’s Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA and I think of them as native plant rock stars.

Mark is Botanic Garden Director, and Dan propagator and stock bed grower at Garden in the Woods.

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Bid On 2 Hours of Gardening with Me at the Easton Lions Club Auction – 86 minutes to go!

Home garden at Easton's Garden-911 specializes in native plants that support pollinators.

Speckled fritillary butterfly on native coneflower at the home of Garden-911 in Easton, MA. [Photo copyright 2017 Carol Lundeen]

Want a more sustainable garden and support a robust local non-profit! Just 1 hour, 26 minutes until the bidding ends on two hours of side-by-side gardening with me, to benefit the Easton Lions Club.

Learn more and BID NOW!

BIDDING ENDS AT 4 P.M. TODAY!

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