Resources
Non-Native Plant Species in Maryland
www.dnr.state.md.us/wildlife/ieplists.asp
EPA climate change
www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html
Maryland Native Plant Society (MNPS)
http://www.mdflora.org/
About Maryland's Habitats
American Forests’ National Champion
http://www.americanforests.org/resources/bigtrees
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Maryland Arboretums and Gardens to visit:
Adkins Arboretum
Annmarie Garden
Battle Creek Cyprus Swamp
Brookside Gardens
Cylburn Arboretum
Helen Avalynne Tawes Garden
Ladew Topiary Gardens
London Town House and Gardens
McCrillis Gardens
Mount Harmon Plantation House and Gardens
Mt. Washington Arboretum
The Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens of Baltimore
Sherwood Gardens
William Paca House and Garden
Web Reviews
A Great Resource for Information on Greening
Explore EBSCO’s GreenFILE. This freely accessible database provides citations and abstracts for approximately 295,000 articles on the positive and negative aspects of the relationship between humans and the environment. The full text of nearly 5,000 articles is available.
The Library of Congress Librarians Sleuths It Out
Have you ever wondered how grapefruit got its name, or what’s the world’s smallest flower? See the Library of Congress’ fun website, Everyday Mysteries. Here, you’ll find answers to these and other questions you’ve always had but never asked, thanks to the Library’s Science Reference Department. Links will also guide you to more resources on an interesting topic.
Happy Tercentenary, Albrecht von Haller!
Poet, botanist, physiologist, magistrate, and all-around polymath, Albrecht von Haller will celebrate in spirit the 300th anniversary of his birth on October 16, 2008. Visit Haller 300 to learn more about the man who started the botanical garden at the University of Göttingen, published a flora of Switzerland, and was one of the leading opponents of Linnaean nomenclature.
Opening Soon
The Garden Conservancy has posted its 2008 Open Days Schedule. The first garden visits will be on Saturday, April 5 in Vero Beach, Florida. Plan to visit gardens in the Philadelphia area on May 18 and July 12.
Root Words
If botanical terminology has you stumped, visit Garden Gate’s Glossary of Roots of Botanical Names. Here, you will learn that the Delphinium is so named because of its flowers’ resemblance to dolphins; and that the root “ludovic” means that a plant is native to the State of Louisiana.
You Grow Girl Keeps on Growing
Join blogger and author Gayla Trail in celebrating the eighth birthday of her project, You Grow Girl. Since 2000, Ms. Trail has maintained an online gardening community with a contemporary and environmental yet stylish and humorous approach. Visit the website
No Yard? No Problem!” Exclaims Washington Gardener Magazine
“Patio, Balcony & Rooftop Gardens” is the March/April ’08 issue cover story of Washington Gardener Magazine. So many urban gardeners believe that gardening is for those with an acre of land. The truth is you only need a Dixie cup and a trowel full of dirt to start a garden in the city! Sure there are challenges to city gardening – the drying heat, winds, and polluted air – but none are insurmountable. See our current issue for the latest methods local gardeners are using to grow great gardens -- without a yard!
Washington Gardener Magazine’s March/April 2008 issue is jam-packed full of great seasonal articles for gardeners in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Inside it are:
No Yard? No Problem: Patio, Balcony & Rooftop Gardens
· 16 Photo Contest Winners Seed Starting Basics
Profile of Brookside Garden’s Phil Normandy
Elevated Edibles: A Garden on High
· Temperate Tropicals
· Captivating Coral Bells (Heucheras)
· A Living History Farm in WV
· WeedWatch: Indian Mock Strawberry
· An American Garden in the Japanese-Style
· Cardozo High School’s Butterfly Garden of Change
· And much, much more.
Washington Gardener magazine (www.WashingtonGardener.com) is the gardening publication specifically for the local metro area — zones 6-7 — Washington DC and its suburbs. Washington Gardener magazine’s basic mission is to help DC area gardens grow better. The magazine is written entirely by local area gardeners. The content of the magazine gives real examples that residents of the greater DC region can use immediately in your own garden.
Free Plant Information Online
Plant Information Online, one of the best internet resources for botanical and horticultural information, once only available by subscription, is now free to the public. University of Minnesota Libraries maintains this huge database of botanical images, information, and plant and seed sources.
Catch Up on the Latest Botanical Research
Peruse New York Botanical Garden’s research pages .Their scientists have been doing research in the field since 1891. Learn what they have discovered during their nearly 2,000 expeditions about lichens or liverworts, ferns or frankincense.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been diminishing the honeybee population across the country. Several interesting websites explain what a world without honeybees or other pollinators might be like. Explore National Biological Information Infrastructure’s Ecological Topics: Pollinators , Celebrating Wildflowers - Pollinators , or the National Academy of Sciences’ Resources on Pollinators to learn about this problem, and about the other animals that make our world productive.
Botany from British Columbia
Get your daily dose of botany from the University of British Columbia’s blog, Botany Photo of the Day. Treat yourself to a beautiful plant portrait and a few descriptive paragraphs each day. Blogger Dan Mosquin welcomes your comments and contributions.
Reacquaint Yourself with Rodale Institute
Help the Rodale Institute celebrate its 60th anniversary. Their website is full of current events, news, activities, and information on organic gardening for all ages.
Plants and People in the Workplace
Want to encourage your employer to incorporate more plants into your workplace? Consult the Plants for People website for facts on how plants in the workplace increase workers’ health, happiness, and productivity. The site also includes many plant-science activities for children.
MedlinePlus Herbal Medicine
Plants were our first medicines and are still used for that purpose today. The National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus Herbal Medicine site is a starting point for investigating the benefits and risks of herbal medicine, learning which plants treat which condition, and finding other information on this topic.
PHS Announces 2008 Gold Medal Plants
PHS has made its annual selection of plants notable for their pest resistance, ease of growing, and beauty. Read about our 2008 winners, including Common Boxwood, Japanese Hornbeam, Gold Rush Dawn Redwood, and Japanese Plum Yew at Gold Medal Plants – Recent Winners
To learn more about this program and past winners, visit www.goldmedalplants.org
Nature Story
“Stories from the Heart of the Land” is a public radio show sponsored by the Nature Conservancy and Visa. Listen to stories of people interacting with nature all over the world and in ways you might not have imagined.
Just the Plants Ma’am
Meet Flora Delaterre, Plant Detective. She is a character created by the University of Montana who hosts the radio show “The Plant Detective.” Ms. Delaterre travels the globe to investigate medicinal plants and reports to you via her radio broadcasts and this colorful, informative website.
Sustainable Table – Serving Up Healthy Food Choices
Sustainable Table provides information and tools to help you shop smarter and eat healthier. Use this highly interactive site to learn why locally grown food is not only healthier for you and for the environment, but also more delicious.
Make Your Lawn Safe
SafeLawns was founded in 2006 to spread the word about the advantages of organic lawn care and gardening. Watch their instructional videos on how to care for your lawn organically. Use this knowledge to participate in the SafeLawns Challenge, a pledge to manage your lawn using organic methods. Your pledge will help Safe Lawns to reach their goal of one million acres managed organically by 2010.
New York Times health writer Jane Brody recently wrote about some of our most common poisonous plants especially the all-too-common Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). She interviewed Dr. Lewis S. Nelson, M.D., who co-wrote the Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants, a reference work written for health professionals that home gardeners should look at as well.
A Magic Hour
The National Wildlife Federation encourages parents to give their children a daily dose of nature through 60 minutes of unstructured time spent outdoors. Their Green Hour website features a blog, community pages, suggestions for activities, book lists, photography tips and articles on nature’s effects on children. Now that long summer days are here, you have no excuse for staying inside!
What’s the Buzz?
During summer evenings, you may find yourself enjoying a little night music. Identify chirps, buzzes and whistles and learn about the creatures that produce them on the Singing Insects of North America (SINA) website. Listen to the recorded songs of crickets, cicadas, and katydids and you’ll quickly become a fan.
Catalogue of Life Exceeds One Million Species
It seems fitting that during Linnaeus’s tercentenary year, Species 2000 and Interagency Taxonomic Information System’s Catalogue of Life has exceeded one million entries. The Catalogue of Life is the product of the collaboration of several governmental agencies, including National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, and the Smithsonian Institution. This partnership has become known as the Interagency Taxonomic Information System, or ITIS. Its goal is to catalogue all Earth’s animal and plant species by 2011. They estimate that they are “just more than half done.” Click here to browse their impressive work so far.
Wildflower Power
The entire family can learn about wildflowers on the US Forest Service’s Celebrating Wildflowers, a website dedicated to instruction about and enjoyment of our nation’s wildflowers. Check in periodically for the Plant of the Week or Pollinator of the Month, and to update your children’s coloring books with the site’s coloring pages.
Kitchen Gardeners of the World, Unite!
If you enjoy growing and eating plants from your garden, visit Kitchen Gardeners International’s website. Their mission is “to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through the promotion of kitchen gardening, home-cooking, and sustainable local food systems.” Perhaps you’d like to find a recipe, volunteer to participate in Kitchen Garden Day (August 26, 2007), or see a picture of people sporting asparagus costumes. You can do all this and more at the website.
