Native woodland gardens

It was nice this morning to share thoughts about creating native woodland gardens  with an OLLI class (check out OLLI programs if you're in the US -- a great lifelong learning initiative).

It's been a lovely journey to transform lawn to woodland habitat over the last two decades, and we now finally have Christmas ferns, bloodroot, wild ginger, crested iris, green-and-gold, and pussytoes flourishing along our front pathway.

a giant bloodroot

It was all about creating a decent "forest" soil -- more full of humus, a bit deeper, etc. from the shallow, shade-stressed grass that grew there before.

And the water oak that anchors the driveway produces slow-to-break-down leaves -- not the best situation, but eventually they DO turn into humus-rich leaf mulch.

That's what supported the bloodroot expansion!

P.S. See the sidebar for a link to a pdf version of the creating a woodland garden presentation.