Winter: The Quiet Season
Enjoy this lovely essay by Wendy Mills on winter dormancy.
Protecting Young Trees from Deer
Your young, newly planted trees are very attractive to our healthy white-tailed deer population. Not only are the leaves and tender young growth within easy height for feeding, deer will utilize young trees for rubbing their antlers and do serious damage to the bark and trunk of even newly planted trees.
Protection from wildlife is important for guarding the initial investment of planting. Overall, wildlife protection should be adaptive and based on need, cost, desired effectiveness, installation effort, and ease of maintenance.
The Indestructible Houseplant
If National House Plant Appreciation Day (Jan. 10) got you thinking about getting a house plant for the first time or if you are looking for easy-to-grow house plants to expand your existing collection, The Indestructible House Plant: 200 Beautiful Plants that Everyone Can Grow by Tovah Martin is a great resource.
Climate Change and Its Effect on Gardening
Climate-Conscious Gardening To quote David W. Wolfe, Professor of Plant & Soil Ecology at Cornell University, “We are in the unfortunate situation of being the first generation of gardeners, ever, …
The Glossary Project and “Word of the Week”
To back up and bolster the wealth of original content provided on our Web site, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia (MGNV) has begun building a glossary of horticultural and botanical terms...As we undertake this effort, we plan to share our work in progress through a new feature on our site, a weekly posting to be called “Word of the Week” (WoW) that offers new word explorations in manageable, and, we hope, at least sometimes entertaining bites – with photographs to illustrate the terms and concepts.
Landscape for Wildlife: A New MGNV Facebook Series
In 2021, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia will introduce Landscape for Wildlife, a new series of educational posts on Facebook which will run weekly on Thursday mornings starting Jan. 7. Landscape for Wildlife will focus on the services that native species can provide to endangered pollinators, birds, small mammals, and other wildlife when homeowners include them in residential landscapes.