In the News: Theodore Payne's Native Plant Tour is Coming Up

Every year I look forward to this Springtime weekend event in Los Angeles.  The Tour is always so well planned. On one day most of the homes on the tour are on the Westside, while the other day covers homes in the San Fernando Valley. I never see everything, but instead look at the list & on-line photos to see which gardens are a MUST SEE for me. 

If you have never been on the tour and you love native plants, you really need to go. It is a wonderful way to get ideas for planning your own native plant garden. Docents are on-hand to answer questions about what you are seeing and sometime the garden owners themselves.

I remember one year enjoying a Westside Garden where there were more hummingbirds than I'd ever seen in one place!  They kept dive bombing my head while I toured the hillside garden.

How do you decide what to plant? One of the hardest things about native plant gardening is getting to see the plants not in a plastic pot but living & thriving in the ground and in a garden.  You can see what the plants look like when they are mature, and what plants they like to live next to.

All the info you need is here: Theodore Payne's Native Plant Tour 

See you there!  April 14 & 15 - Tickets Available Now

In the News: Celebrating 109th Birthday of the National Wildlife Refuge System

 
Ducks take off at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Photo: Steve Hillebrand
                                                                        

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

The birth of the National Wildlife Refuge System on March 14, 1903, ensured that our children and our children’s children will inherit an America that still has natural spaces and the wild creatures.

President Teddy Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge on Florida’s Pelican Island to protect wild birds from bounty hunters. Today, the Refuge System’s 556 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts make up the nation’s premier network of public lands, providing vital habitat for thousands of animal and plant species. Read the story..

In the News: Daylight Savings Inventor Was an Entomologist

Did you know the man who invented Daylight Savings was Entomologist? He was frustrated when dusk came and "interfered with his evening bug-collecting rounds." He wanted to have more daylight in the summer afternoons to catch bugs! He didn't care about winter because he didn't catch bugs then anyway! 

(Excerpt from Joe Satran, Huffington Post) There's now broad agreement among historians that the true mastermind of daylight saving time was George Vernon Hudson (1867-1946), a specialist in insect biology (entomology) who left England for New Zealand in 1881. In 1895, when he first presented the idea to the Royal Society of New Zealand, he was mocked. Other members of the society deemed the proposal confusing and unnecessary. But attitudes changed, and he lived to see his brainchild adopted by many nations -- including, in 1927, his own. Read more...