Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 17

Monarch Landing & Latest Newsletter

What will you find in the Monarch Gardens monthly newsletter? Moments to carry you onward, that's what.


Of course, there are links to some outstanding environmental articles, my Houzz pieces (native plant alternatives to common exotics is one), and my experiences in Nebraska wildness. Link on over and subscribe if you'd like. We averted our first freeze last night, and our front lawn is about 50% replanted with natives, so let the games continue! More prairie wherever you can get it during thi...

Husker Football Balloon Releases & Nebraska Littering

This post was written by my wife; we're both passionate about Nebraska and what's left of the prairie along with the wildlife in it. Releasing balloons to celebrate the first touchdown at Husker football games is nothing short of mass littering -- punishable by fines most everywhere else -- and the practice kills wildlife while polluting Nebraska and states thousands of miles away. This is not a "tradition" worth keeping if we love Nebraska, our home. BV


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Nine Mile Prairie Tour

This weekend my wife and I toured the largest virgin tract of prairie in eastern Nebraska, which is just 15 minutes from our house. Nine Mile Prairie is managed by UNL and owned by the University of Nebraska Foundation (UNL leases it from the foundation for $1 a year). But at just 230 acres it's a small remnant (well, quite large really, but still...). 392 plant species and over 80 bird species have been recorded at Nine Mile, and it's a genetic material seed source for restorations around Ne...

G'bye Lawn: Making a Sustainable Prairie Garden

For years my wife and I have wanted to remove our front lawn and replace it with a prairie garden that increases water penetration, soil fertility, and helps pollinating insects. We're up against suburban dogma that says lawn is king -- we have neighbors that mow 3x a week, hire TruGreen, trim lawn with scissors, and water every morning with auto sprinklers. But we're burning to make a difference.

We want to set a better example and use our space to teach and inspire in as many ways as we can....

The Morality of Extinction in Our Gardens

Folks, I got fired up this morning by a piece that strikes at the heart of my thinking over the last year. John Fitzpatrick, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has the most brilliant, heart wrenching call to action I've read in some time (he's reflecting on the centennial of Martha's death, the last passenger pigeon of billions we hunted to extinction). And when he calls the loss of species a moral issue, well, you know I was hooked.

"The State of the Birds report identifies more...

Native Plants in Downtown Lincoln!

When your city does something right, one should heap praise on it. Of course, when your city builds a monstrous 1/4 block concrete patio on the corner of P and 13th streets -- with not a plant in site -- you should cry bloody murder.

It's better to walk south on 13th street a few blocks, between at least K and M. There you'll find a collection of small beds between the street and sidewalk featuring the below (excuse the image quality, I was using my cell):

Monarch on Liatris ligulistylis Love Ru...

Your Garden is Defiant Compassion

Your garden is a protest. It is a place of defiant compassion. That space is one to help sustain wildlife and ecosystem function while providing an aesthetic response that moves you. For you, beauty isn't petal deep, but goes down into the soil, further down into the aquifer, and back up into the air and for miles around on the backs and legs of insects. You don't have to see soil microbes in action, birds eating seeds, butterflies laying eggs, ants farming aphids -- just knowing it's possibl...

1 Million Article Views & Butterfly Mania

I'm pretty excited that my Houzz articles have reached 1 million total views, and 90% of those have happened in the last year since I went weekly. Topics have included the benefits of native plants, why to mitigate lawn and what to replace it with, gardening for bees and butterflies, design risks to take, climate change gardening, being more selfless in the landscape, how to cut down on mulch, drought tolerant shade plants, the benefits of aggressive plants, and tons of plant profiles. Link o...

Native Plant Gardens in Lincoln

Last month I showed you images around the Pioneers Park Nature Center and prairie. Now I've got three more locations that show various degrees of design intent, from more formal to utilitarian to semi natural. It's hard to find these places around town, so if you know of any private or public gardens featuring a significant percentage of native plants, please contact me.

First up is Union Plaza just east of downtown and off of O Street. I've been critical of the park before, and in many ways...

Morality as Imagination

I know -- you just want pretty garden pictures. But I'm a thinking guy, and in that thinking I fall in love with the world around me -- which is where my ethical imperatives in the garden come from:

"Logical thinking alone can only elaborate what it already knows; it is at root tautologous. To make a real scientific discovery requires more than logic or data collection; it requires imagination. As Einstein remarked, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all...