At first glance, ‘No Mow May’ seems like a winning idea to encourage people to delay their first mowing of the season so early spring flowers in the lawn will be available for pollinators. While I appreciate any approach to helping wildlife that requires...
Read moreAlong the backroads of the Uwharries, the trees seemed especially brilliant this fall. Through the windshield, the blur of sourwoods, sweetgums, black gums and maples was a psychedelic kaleidoscope. But something was missing. Where was the riot of yellow and purple in the herbaceous layer? There were no sunflowers. No goldenrods. No ironweeds, asters or liatris.
Read moreBecky Dill’s phone was full. After moving to Wadesboro from Pennsylvania, she’d started taking photos of all the pretty wildflowers she found along the backroads of Anson County. She needed to ditch some images. While searching for options to archive her photos, she stumbled across iNaturalist. It seemed too good to be true – the site would store her images for free, and experts would help her...
Read moreMichael Gallis is a longtime planner with a big idea for Charlotte: Throw out the city's transit expansion plans and start from scratch. Gallis — who's been involved in some of the big plans guiding Charlotte's future, including the original five-corridor transit plan...
Charlotte loves its trees. But are we willing to do all that we can to save them?
That's the paradoxical question confronting Jane Singleton Myers, executive director of TreesCharlotte. The city's iconic tree canopy has shrunk from 49% to 45% coverage...
Read moreFrom seemingly endless heat waves in the west to catastrophic floods from Kentucky to Pakistan, a drumbeat of extreme weather has dominated the news this summer. In Charlotte, it can feel like we’re not on the front lines of climate change — we’re not on the coast watching sea levels...
I love playing matchmaker in my garden. I introduce plants that will be compatible in terms of color, texture and form. As with humans, the best relationships achieve a balance of contrast and harmony. For example, I paired little bluestem and rattlesnake master because they share the same blue foliage, but one is coarse and strappy while the other is refined and upright. These arranged...
Read moreCharlotte’s seen rapid growth over the past several decades, but many say that boom has come at the cost of inclusivity and, perhaps, even a bit of the city’s soul. With the loss of many historic buildings and without much of an identifiable design vernacular — aside, perhaps, from the profusion of five-story apartment buildings — Charlotte’s even been accused of looking and feeling bland....
Read moreThe message seems to be getting out — monarchs need milkweed. The charismatic orange and black butterflies seek nectar on a wide variety of flowers, but their caterpillars feed on no other plant. And that appears to be where the clarity ends. Even after planting and managing for several of the 16 milkweed species native to North Carolina, I was still perplexed by the monarch’s preferences and...
Read moreBucket of Doom. A slasher movie from the 1970s? The latest season of Fortnite? No, but for many homeowners, it might be something equally thrilling – an effective, inexpensive and safe way to control mosquitos.
Five-gallon buckets are often a source of standing water where mosquitos can breed. This simple idea turns that around so the humble bucket becomes your ally in the fight for...
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