In her new book, Pollinator Friendly Gardening, author and Northern Gardener columnist Rhonda Fleming Hayes reinforces a benefit of gardening with pollinators in mind that is sometimes glossed over in other books and articles about the pollinator crisis: Having birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects in your yard and garden is good for the…

I have a patch at the back of my yard where the ground dips to a low spot just beneath a silver maple tree. For years, I considered this spot a conundrum: it’s drenched in afternoon shade, it hoards rain water when storms move through our area, but somehow transforms into cracked earth during stretches…

There is something magical about seeing a hummingbird darting from flower to flower in your garden. Some mornings, I sit on the back steps with my coffee in hopes of spotting a hummingbird, and in late summer, I am often rewarded with a glimpse of metallic green and red. Attracting hummingbirds to your garden is…