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OUTDOORS: Celebrate pollinators
Bees, butterflies and bugs are some of the important pollinators that help generate wildflower displays, produce crops and sustain native plants.
They can’t do their part without the plants, and the Texas Pollinator Bio Blitz is helping bring attention to the habitat needs of pollinators across the state.
This is the height of the monarch butterfly migration season.
The Texas Pollinator Bio Blitz is a statewide effort to identify as many pollinators as possible from Oct. 7-16.
Search for pollinators such as bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, birds and other animals, and post about them on Instagram and iNaturalist.
“This Pollinator Bio Blitz is going to be a tremendous help to us because monarchs and other pollinators are in trouble,” said Nancy Herron, director of outreach and education for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Herron said the monarch is losing habitat and important larval and adult food resources. She reported the population has declined by nearly 80 percent the past 20 years.
The only tools needed are a camera or Smartphone, and access to the Internet. Register for free on the Texas Pollinator Bio Blitz page on the TPWD website.
Registrants will be emailed daily challenges. Read more in The Bowie News.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. (Logo provided by the TPWD, used with permission)
No plant has been more enjoyable in The Garden Guy’s trials than the Forged in Fire heliopsis or false sunflower. There have been a lot of varieties in recent years, but I am going to have to put this one on the must-have list.
Botanically speaking it is Heliopsis helioanthoides, native to the United States. Despite being native to 42 states, many new varieties, award winners and press coverage notwithstanding, it has not been an easy plant to find at the garden center.
Most likely you have never said, “Let’s go to the garden center and pick up a flat of false sunflowers.
Read the full Garden Guy column in today’s Bowie News.
As a card-carrying member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Shadowland Giant Lone Star hosta.
Make no mistake, I don’t believe this hosta was discovered in the shady soil under a Texas Madrone in Guadalupe National Park. It was actually a sport or morphological change in s hosta named Key West. That sounds like a fairy tale story all its own.
But Shadowland Giant Lone Star has winner written all over it. It is large and has thick leaves. When 12 straight days of rain brought out a rainforest of slugs and other forest floor creatures, the bane of hosta growers everywhere, it didn’t load up with holes but simply got more beautiful.
Read the full Garden Guy column in Thursday’s Bowie News.
Supertunia Mini Vista Pink Cloud petunia is having its debut year or thanks to Susan Middleton Turner in south Georgia’s zone 9 Miller County it’s breakout year.
Susan’s house looks quite like a movie set, and you would have to think that Supertunia Mini Vista petunias play a prominent role.
Last year it was the award-winning Supertunia Mini Vista Indigo that dazzled with incredible color. The petunias were planted in banister baskets across the front of the house. I featured her photos in an article I wrote about Mini Vista petunias.
Read the full Garden Guy column in your Thursday Bowie News.
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