Michigan Gardener - Your guide Great Lakes gardening: Garden Event Calendar / Expert Advice / Plant Profiles / Tree Care

PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.

Ann Arbor to host National Rock Garden Meeting in May

January 21, 2015 • Leave a Comment

The Great Lakes Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society is excited to host the group’s 2015 Annual Meeting in Ann Arbor, from May 7-10, 2015.

This is a superb opportunity to see and hear great speakers, and see great gardens. There will also be choice plants, tufa, troughs, and books available to purchase. It is a rare chance to meet and talk with seasoned rock gardeners from all over the U.S. and Canada—without flying to a distant city.

Plus, there is a post-conference tour from May 10-12. This field trip is to the “Straits Region” of Michigan with stops on the way there and back. The focus will be on natural rock gardens and rock garden plants in the wild. This includes shaded and sunny rock outcrops, rocky, gravely, and sandy beaches, plus a stop to see large stands of trilliums.

For more information, click here.

Young generation finds future in agriculture

January 9, 2015 • Leave a Comment

NPR:

America’s heartland is graying. The average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58.3 — and that number has been steadily ticking upward for more than 30 years.

Overall, fewer young people are choosing a life on the land. But in some places around the country, like Maine, that trend is reversing. Small agriculture may be getting big again — and there’s new crop of farmers to thank for it.

On a windy hillside just a few miles from Maine’s rocky mid-coast, it’s 10 degrees; snow is crunching underfoot. Hairy highland cattle munch on flakes of hay and native Katahdin sheep are mustered in a white pool just outside the fence. Not far away, heritage chickens scuttle about a mobile poultry house that looks a bit like a Conestoga wagon.

Marya Gelvosa, majored in English literature and has never lived out in the country before. “Just a few years ago, if you’d told me that I was going to be a farmer, I would have probably laughed at you,” she says.

Read the rest of the story…

Monarch butterflies continue their decline

December 29, 2014 • 2 Comments

The Detroit News:

Brenda Dziedzic caught the bug, or butterfly, early on.

She has fond memories of the fields near where she grew up in Waterford Township teeming with butterflies at a time in her life when she didn’t know a black swallowtail from a pearl crescent.

“They always just seemed so beautiful and peaceful,” said Dziedzic, 62, who now operates a butterfly habitat in Westland. “When you see them, it just brings a smile to your face.”

Smiles have been in shorter supply recently as the population of monarch butterflies, one of the most popular species in the United States, has been in a steep decline in Michigan and across the country. It’s a pattern experts believe was caused by a combination of factors and put the future of Danaus plexippus in question.

Read the rest of the story…

Digital Editions