Bolean Gardens

20/08/2025

Someone wrote a book about what we do at Bolean Gardens. Cool!

Book Review: Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas W. Tallamy

In Nature’s Best Hope, entomologist and ecologist Douglas W. Tallamy offers a stirring manifesto for ecological renewal—not through sweeping legislation or distant wilderness preservation, but through the humble, hopeful act of planting native species in our own backyards. With clarity, urgency, and deep scientific grounding, Tallamy reframes the American landscape as a vast, untapped reservoir of potential habitat, waiting to be reawakened by ordinary citizens.

At the heart of the book is the concept of the “Homegrown National Park”, a grassroots conservation movement that invites homeowners, gardeners, and land stewards to become active participants in restoring biodiversity. Tallamy’s argument is both sobering and empowering: traditional conservation efforts, while essential, cannot stem the tide of ecological decline alone. The fragmented patches of private land—lawns, gardens, roadsides—must be enlisted in the work of healing.

Tallamy’s writing is rich with ecological insight. He explains, for instance, how native plants like oaks and cherries support hundreds of insect species, which in turn feed birds and other wildlife. The example of chickadees needing hundreds of caterpillars a day to raise their young is particularly poignant, illustrating how even the smallest creatures are part of a delicate, interdependent web. In contrast, non-native ornamentals and pesticide-laden lawns offer little sustenance, becoming ecological deserts in a time of urgent need.

What makes Nature’s Best Hope especially compelling is its practical optimism. Tallamy doesn’t merely diagnose the problem—he offers a clear, actionable path forward. Readers are encouraged to reduce lawn size, plant native flora, avoid pesticides, and see their yards not as decorative spaces but as living, breathing ecosystems. The book includes plant lists, design tips, and community engagement strategies, making it both a philosophical guide and a hands-on manual.

Yet beyond its scientific rigor and practical advice, Nature’s Best Hope is a book about belonging. It asks us to reconsider our place in the natural world—not as distant observers, but as participants in its renewal. Tallamy’s vision is quietly radical: that ecological healing begins not in remote preserves, but in the soil beneath our feet.

For anyone seeking to align their gardening practices with deeper ecological values, or to find hope in the face of environmental loss, Nature’s Best Hope is an essential read. It reminds us that the most powerful conservation tool may be the shovel in our own hands—and the willingness to plant with purpose.

04/08/2025

Good day everyone. It's hot and I'm taking a break from planting lilies. Of course we should never plant lilies in the summer, but when someone gives you a basket full of free lilies, what's a gardener to do? Not plant them?

Anyway, I'm sitting in the shade with a nice cool glass of water, watching the bumblebees and listening to the hummingbirds, plotting my next bold move while doomscrolling, when I come across yet another great post from Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't.

And I couldn't not share it, for three reasons:

1) I greatly dislike mullein, too.
2) I agree with everything the botanist says.
3) His accent. Really. Check it out and tell me you disagree:

31/07/2025

Yeah, this:

Just want to clarify that leaf "damage" isn't "damage" and we should stop using the word so others stop seeing it as "damage."

Lawn mowers cause damage.

Leafcutter bees, butterfly larvae, moth larvae, etc are eating.

And we want them to be eating since without them we're pretty much screwed.

Is it "damage" when you eat a salad? (Maybe it depends on how the salad was grown and shipped.)

23/07/2025

And now, a message from our friends at "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't":

21/07/2025

Homemade slug trap: drop your phone while picking raspberries, then pick it up two hours later.

19/07/2025

Food for thought:

Honeybees and the Cost of Good Intentions

Honeybees are often celebrated as agricultural heroes—pollinators of crops, producers of honey, and symbols of environmental stewardship. Their role in crafting honey ale and mead adds a touch of romance to their industrious image. But beneath the golden glow of the hive lies a more complicated truth. While honeybees support food production, which is significant, their presence in local ecosystems can lead to unintended and sometimes harmful consequences.

Let’s begin with a simple fact: honeybees are not endangered. They are domesticated livestock, bred and managed by humans. When people speak of “saving the bees,” they often mean honeybees—but the real crisis lies with native pollinators, many of which are in steep decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use, disease, and competition from honeybees themselves.

In recent years, well-meaning individuals have turned to backyard beekeeping as a way to “help the bees.” But this heartfelt impulse often backfires. Urban and suburban areas are increasingly saturated with hobby hives, each introducing 15,000 to 50,000 additional mouths to feed into landscapes that may already lack sufficient floral resources. A single hive can consume enough pollen over three months to support the development of 100,000 native solitary bees.

This competition has real consequences. Honeybees dominate floral resources, leaving less nectar and pollen for native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Studies have shown that as honeybee densities increase, native bee diversity declines. In cities like Montreal and London, researchers have documented a direct correlation between the number of hives and the disappearance of native species. The conservation group Buglife recommends five acres of habitat per hive—far more than the average residential lot.

The risks extend beyond competition. Honeybees are vectors for disease. Pathogens like deformed wing virus (DWV) and black queen cell virus (BQCV), often spread by Varroa destructor mites in managed hives, can infect wild bees through shared flowers. DWV has been observed in native bumble bees, who contract it simply by foraging where infected honeybees have been. Photos of bumble bees with crumpled, useless wings—unable to fly, slowly dying—are becoming heartbreakingly common in native plant gardens.

It’s a myth that honeybees and native bees use different flowers. Anyone who has watched a patch of bee balm or mountain mint in bloom knows better. The overlap is constant, and so is the risk of transmission.

Even as pollinators, honeybees are not always helpful. According to the Xerces Society, honeybees are often subpar pollinators compared to native bees. They groom their pollen into tidy cakes that are less likely to contact the stigma of another flower. They lack behaviors like buzz pollination, which bumble bees use to release pollen from certain native plants. And they are known “nectar robbers,” sometimes bypassing pollen entirely by biting into the base of flowers.

Worse still, honeybee pollination can promote the spread of invasive plants. Japanese knotweed, for example—a highly aggressive species that displaces native vegetation—is extremely attractive to honeybees. By enhancing its seed production, honeybees may inadvertently help it spread.

To be clear, managed hives do play a vital role in large-scale agriculture, especially in monocultures where native habitat has been stripped away. In such settings, honeybees are often the only viable pollinators left, and their presence can be essential to crop yields. But this agricultural necessity does not translate to ecological benefit in natural areas or backyard gardens.

The best way to help bees is not to raise more of them—it’s to make space for the ones already here. Plant native species. Protect wild habitat. Reduce pesticide use. And resist the seductive simplicity of the hive.
North American ecosystems thrived for millions of years without honeybees, which have only recently arrived. While their value in agriculture and honey production is undeniable, their presence in natural areas and backyard gardens often comes at a cost—one borne not by humans, but by the very pollinators we aim to protect.

Supporting native species means resisting the allure of easy fixes and comforting narratives. It demands that we think beyond the hive—toward the intricate, often fragile web of life that sustains us all. Because in tending to the health of local ecosystems, we do more than “save the bees.” We begin to distinguish agricultural necessity from ecological stewardship, reckon with the cost of good intentions, and safeguard the soil, water, and wildness that ensure our own survival.

16/06/2025

The only good thing I read on the internet today:

07/06/2025

Oh, happy Blister beetles. How we love thee, so long as we don't touch thee.

25/01/2025

I've read about thirty or forty books about pruning in my life so far, and I expect to read several more before I myself am pruned, dumped on a compost heap somewhere, and slowly converted into plant food by various species of macro and microorganisms.

If you have read one or two (or forty) books about pruning, you will have noticed that every book recommends that you begin by pruning out the dead wood. The books will tell you that the dead wood serves no beneficial purpose, and that dead wood is an entry point for disease and potential insect attack.

However, reality tells us a very different story, and I would argue that dead wood in a tree serves many beneficial purposes. I am fairly certain that the sixty-two Cedar Waxwings perched on the dead branches of the Cottonwood tree in the accompanying photograph would agree with me.

Most of the branches of this Cottonwood are alive and healthy, but quite a few are dead. And it is interesting that the Waxwings, who have been flocking around here for the last few weeks while they slowly devour this winter's abundance of Juniper and Mountain Ash berries, invariably choose to perch on the dead branches.

I can't tell you why they choose to do this. They are a tight-lipped lot, clannish and aloof, and refuse to answer my questions no matter how politely I phrase them.

Regardless, I expect to find dozens of young Juniper and Mountain Ash seedlings underneath the dead branches of the Cottonwood this coming summer, and that suggests to me that there are at least two good reasons for not pruning the dead branches. There are probably many more.

24/12/2024

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Especially to this pocket gopher. Goodnight, pocket gopher.

05/10/2024

What's blooming in your garden today? We've got Fall Crocus, wild strawberries, and a geranium not yet dead from the frost. Fall is indeed a magical time of year, eh?

30/09/2024

Minus one this morning. Yesterday was a blur of picking, chopping, and preserving. Not a bad haul for a couple of hicks up in the mountains, eh?