Author: Lisa Trapp
Properly caring for gardens requires a year round investment of time and resources. Even when planting with predominantly native species, there is not much time for rest. Winters are filled with combating invasive species and winter weeds. Summers are spent tackling annual weeds, and long periods of heat and drought — when extra attention to watering and plant health become the priority. When working with public gardens,
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Author: Katy Riley
Hello reader! My name is Katy, and I am currently a graduate student in Virginia Tech’s Executive Master of Natural Resources (XMNR) Program. The XMNR program focuses on leadership for sustainability, emphasizing the development of professionals who can effectively ‘lead from where they are’ to address the complex challenges of sustainable development and environmental security. Over the past several months, I have been interning with Capital Trees to gain a deeper understanding of urban greening efforts taking place in the City of Richmond.
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Author: Lisa Trapp
Research is starting to suggest that urban landscapes that prioritize native species and utilize diverse plant palettes, may be hotspots for supporting our native pollinators (1). These densely planted areas can provide opportunities for pollinators to find food, habitat, and overwintering resources all within a relatively compact space. By contrast, suburban and rural environments may not support pollinators as well as once believed. Even though these areas have more lawn and green space,
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Author: Lisa Trapp
There is an interesting time in the gardens when summer is ending but fall hasn’t quite arrived. It is brief, but very special. The late afternoons still provide intense sun and waves of heat, but the early mornings have a chill that whispers of the coming fall. Many flowers are giving way to seeds and husks, but the gardens are still very much alive. It is easy to miss the changes that are happening.
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Author: Mary Petres
Despite the unbearable heat these last few weeks, there are hints of fall in the air. What does this signify for the gardener and our gardens?
Over the next three months we will begin to put our gardens to bed. How we do this depends on our objective. Traditionally, many of us feel the need to have a “clean slate” moving into winter. We cut all the spent flower stalks to the ground and throw them in the trash or compost.
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Author: Shelly Barrick Parsons
While many of us are longing for cool fall breezes and the change of seasons, forecasters have been reporting record level heat in the Richmond region. Temperatures that exceed 90 degrees fall into the “extreme heat” category. When there’s inadequate shade available, temperatures of that level can be brutal and dangerous. This summer was the hottest on record across the world, and the number of annual extreme heat days in Richmond is expected to increase over the next decade.(1) Unfortunately,
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Author: Lisa Trapp
A few months ago we highlighted some interesting characteristics about a well known and highly effective pollinator, the bumble bee (Bombus spp.). Bumble bees are only one of many native bees we might spot in our, or a neighborhood, garden. Bees can be very hard to identify by sight alone, for a number of reasons — perhaps they are too small to see differentiations, or maybe they mimic other species,
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Author: Mary Petres
Hello fellow gardeners, we are deep in the throes of summer in RVA and we wanted to take a second to cover some basics on watering! It sounds easy enough, you set the irrigation system or turn on the sprinkler and walk away, right? Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as that, especially when working with young or newly transplanted plants.
Because there is no hard and fast watering rule that applies to all plants,
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Author: Anna Aquino, Co-chair Bee City USA Richmond
Capital Trees is doing better by bugs! Together with community members and partners (Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities, and the four Richmond clubs of the Garden Club of Virginia), we are co-sponsoring Bee City USA Richmond, an initiative of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.(1) Bee Cities commit to implement the following principles and practices
Author: Anna Aquino
The ecological functions of dead and decaying trees are beyond compare.
Great news! There is life after death. That dead tree in the backyard supports more life than the living one next to it, lots more. It is probably the most underappreciated feature in the natural world. Birds, mammals, reptiles, bats, tree frogs, native bees, depend on dead and decaying trees. They raise their families in them, store food in them,
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