It’s time to check out the June VCE Garden Guide for vegetable and herb gardening!
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All the garden guides are available at VCE Garden Guide under Resources on the MGNV site.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Baptisia is a bold plant that in early spring produces multiple stems of beautiful gray-green foliage. By mid-spring the foliage is topped by 1- to 2-foot flowering spikes that are a magnificent blue color. Handsome blue-black seed pods follow the flowers and remain attractive until the first hard frost. Learn more . . .
Get ideas for the right plant for that special place in your yard:
Tour the gardens • Get advice from Master Gardeners • Tree Walk in the park
Get free seeds • Try your luck in a plant raffle
The Sunny and Shade Gardens are located in
Bon Air Park off Wilson Blvd. at 850 N. Lexington Street. The Sunny Garden is located adjacent to the parking lot near the rose garden. To find the Shade Garden, walk along the paved path by the left side of the Sunny Garden around the corner.
Saturday, June 1, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Glencarlyn Library Community Garden
300 South Kensington Street, Arlington, VA 22204
Learn from Extension Master Gardener interns how they designed and installed a trellis and selected native plants to serve as nectar and host plants for a variety of pollinators in the renovation of the Pollinator Bed at Glencarlyn Library Community Garden.
Free. Questions? Telephone 703-228-6414 or email mgarlalex@gmail.com.
Visit the MGNV display at the City of Alexandria’s 9th Annual Commemoration of D-Day.
By Joan McIntyre, Extension Master Gardener
Adult Deer Tick
About 75 percent of food crops (and 90 percent of all flowering plants) depend on insects for pollination, accounting for 35 percent of the plant-based food supply coming from farms. Many animals directly or indirectly rely on insects for food. Insects form the foundation of life on earth, and they are in crisis.
An international team of biologists estimated last year that the abundance of insects had decreased 45 percent in the past 35 years, and a German study showed a 75 percent decline in biomass of flying insects. Dozens of bird species, which feed caterpillars and other insects to their young, have lost more than 50 percent of their populations between 1970 and 2014. These declines have been attributed to habitat loss, agricultural practices, pesticides, and climate change.
