Growing up in Baltimore city

That is why I was thrilled to be part of today’s announcement to make Baltimore a Community Wildlife Habitat® — the largest along the Chesapeake Bay. We don’t usually think of wildlife in cities but cities and surrounding areas are home to two-thirds of all North American wildlife species. National Wildlife Federation’s investment in Baltimore is not only about wildlife, though, it is about creating gardens that will make neighborhoods more beautiful, improve water quality of local streams and provide opportunities to get kids outside.

Like many people, my summer days were long and usually resulted in grass stains and being called in for dinner. Unfortunately, childhood has moved indoors during the last two decades. This is not only a lost connection to the outdoors but something that has contributed to the childhood obesity rate as well as declining creativity and concentration.

To address this issue we will focus on sustainable foods and healthy living at six Baltimore City public schools.  We plan to install edible food gardens on schoolyards and create opportunities for families to spend more time outdoors.

Baltimore has always been a city of for the birds, now we can make it official.  I can’t wait to add it to my list of special things about my hometown.

These prairie winecups are among the plants native to Colorado. Photo by the National Wildlife Federation.

Whatever the reason, Denver-area gardeners seem to be increasingly interested in indigenous flowers, grasses and shrubs. Every May for the past seven years, the Boulder office of the National Wildlife Federation has been a key stop for those gardeners. The staff sponsors what’s believed to be a one-of-a-kind event in the Denver area – an all-native plant sale.

Ranger Rick helps one of the volunteers at the 2012 National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Sale. NWF Photo

NWF: What are some of advantages of native plants?
Eirin: There are quite a few advantages. I would say first and foremost is the habitat value. There are certain native insects that will take nectar only from the native wild flowers. Secondly, I would say the plants do not need the increased fertilizer. They do not need, for the most part, high irrigation. Since they are native plants, they can exist on very low fertilizer, just what exists in the soil, and also exist on the precipitation we get in this area. And the native plants are perennials, so you’ll get to enjoy them year after year. They’re not something you’re going to have to pull up every season. They’re going to pop up every spring.

NWF: How do native plants benefit wildlife?
Eirin: When you plant natives, you’re creating an insectary. What I mean by that is you’re creating a place for beneficial insects to reside that are either going to pollinate our vegetables or fruit trees or they’re actually going to eat or kill some of the pests in our garden. We have 17 species at the plant sale that are honey-bee attractors. We also have hummingbird-attractor plants, plants that are good for butterflies and also plants that are wonderful nesting habitat for our local bird species.

NWF: Do native plants require less water than non-native plants?
Eirin: If they’re planted in the micro-climate that they’re supposed to be planted in, they exist on what is termed moderate to low water. That’s water two or fewer times a week.

NWF: Is interest in native plants growing?
Eirin: I think so. I’ve only lived in Denver for three years, but since (the drought in) 2002, with the low water use, people began to get interested in low-water-use plants and that naturally turned toward some of our indigenous plants in the area. It’s so important for us to be using native plants to show the landscape vernacular that used to exist here – the prairies, the grasslands. The native grasses are wonderful habitat and foundation plants in the landscape. The keystone species to our short grass prairie is blue grama and it’s host to a Colorado alpine butterfly. A taller grass species, big bluestem, is host to two rare skipper butterflies.

NWF: Does Denver plant native vegetation in its parks?
Eirin: We have the more traditional parks that I think a lot of people are familiar with, which has the Kentucky bluegrass. Starting in 2006, conversion sites were defined, starting with four parks in the city. They were converted to short-grass prairie. So, there’s been a large movement. Now, just in my district, I have about 350 acres of native short-grass prairie areas. We’re going to be seeing less and less Kentucky blue grass and more native areas being planted.

The columbine is one of the most popular native plants of Colorado gardeners. Photo by John Gale.

Outside Denver? You Can Still Go Native!

Learn more about choosing and cultivating native plants, then turn your yard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat ® site. This month only, Garden For Wildlife Month, NWF will plant a native tree in your honor when you certify your property.

To help celebrate this special birthday, I decided to take a series of photos of 40 garden objects. This photo series was inspired by the blog Things Organized Neatly. My arrangements are not arranged as neatly as many photos on that blog, but you get the idea.

Here’s photo #3 – 40 green leaves from plants in my neighborhood:

40 Green Leaves from my neighborhood

Can You Identify the Plants?

Here’s my best guesses, although I am not a naturalist:

4. Virginia Creeper

6. Viola

8. Cabbage

9. Liriope

11. Hosta

13. Holly

14. Hosta

17. Holly

18. Wild Strawberry

20. Clover

21. Dandelion

22. Yew

25.  Maple

26. Iris

27. Maple

29. Clover

33.  Fern

You can see past 40 garden object photos:

• 40 Garden Tools
• 40 nuts nibbled by squirrels

Share Your 40 Garden Objects Photos!

During Garden for Wildlife month, I’m going to keep taking photos of 40 garden objects. Would you like to join me? What will you photograph? Share your photos at our Garden for Wildlife Facebook page for everyone to see.

And if you haven’t already certified your yard as wildlife-friendly, certify your yard with National Wildlife Federation this month!

Be Out There held it’s Gardening with Kids—How To for Beginners Facebook Chat just in time. With experts on gardening, such as NWF naturalist, David Mizejewski, Peggy Montgomery from American Beauties Native Plants, and Kelly Senser, an avid NWF gardener, we’ve got all the best tips and tricks to get you and your kids outside and those gardens blooming in no time. Weren’t able to join in the chat? No worries—keep reading for all the best highlights that are sure to help get you and your kids excited about your garden.

Q1: How does one get started with gardening?

This is often the hardest question and probably one of the most discouraging for beginners. There are options upon options of what to plant, when you should start, whether you’re in an area that grows certain plants better than other plants.

Here’s what we learned: The best ways to get started are: first think about what kind of things you want to grow. Do you want to plant fruits and veggies or would you rather plant your favorite flowers? Once you’ve figured that out, start small and test out a few options to see how they do.

Sometimes just getting down and dirty in the garden is the best way to figure out what you want to do. You’re also not limited to planting just one thing. Go a little crazy, section of one area of your garden for veggies or fruits and use the other section to grow some beautiful spring flowers. As Beth said, sometimes it’s just enough to “appreciate the beauty of a garden, and the potential of a little seed.”

Gardening is all about experimenting and seeing what works for you. Try what Tricia suggested, and plant some seeds from fruits and vegetables that you’ve already eaten. A watermelon seed might not grow in your stomach, like my older brother always told me it would when we were kids, but it could grow in your garden! NWF Naturalist, David Mizejewski, agrees that planting them and seeing what happens is the way to go. Be Out There’s new Family Garden Guide is a great resource to have when getting started with your family garden. It even has a check list for you to cut out, so you and the kids can check off each step as you go.

Q2: To beginners, gardening can seem like a lot of work. What’s the best way to manage the time and tasks it takes?

Taking care of a garden does take time and some commitment, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a lot of work.

Monzie suggests gardening plants that are low maintenance. You can go to your local gardening store, such as Lowes or Home Depot and talk to the experts in the gardening section. They can show you around and give you an idea of which flowers or other plants won’t throw a wrench in your everyday routine and busy schedules, but will also allow you to get the satisfaction of having your own garden. Or visit American Beauties Native Plants’ website and search what plants are native to your area. Sometimes starting small with potted plants, then moving them to the backyard is a great way to figure out how much time you have to put towards your gardening projects.

Peggy Montgomery, from American Beauties Native Plants, suggests starting small with the amount of time you put into your projects, too. Once you start putting in fiften to thirty minutes, it’ll become like second nature and soon you’ll be waiting for when you can finally get back outside and into your garden.

Q3. What are some ways to get kids excited about growing things and helping with the garden?

Letting your kids eat right from the garden is great! And don’t worry, the dirt doesn’t hurt! Actually, studies have shown that a little bit of dirt can go a long way with improving their immune systems. Plus, the kids will you’re the cool parent for letting them eat something picked right off the vine that they helped grow. Kids love getting messy, so let them! Making seed balls is another great way to get your kids elbow deep in some dirt while having fun gardening. Check out our Activity Finder for more great gardening activities that your kids will love doing.

Q4: Kids LOVE to watch the birds, butterflies, squirrels, and other visitors a garden can attract? What are some simple features you can add to make your garden an even more magical place for kids?

I think just about every kid that sees a caterpillar, butterfly, or bird poking around in their garden will be in awe. The life cycle, as Kelly Senser, of NWF, said, is really great to watch. Planting things that make great homes for caterpillars to start their cocoon and transform into a beautiful butterfly is a great experience for young kids. It allows them to grow an appreciate for not only the garden and the work that goes into it, but the wildlife that they’re giving food, water, and shelter to. Want to know more about gardening for wildlife or interested in creating a Certified Wildlife Habitat for the local wildlife in your backyard? Learn more about it here.

Gardening doesn’t have to be overwhelming or a huge project. It’s a great way to spend time outdoors with your family and relax while learning. As parents, you become the teachers of life and how things grow from a tiny seed smaller than a fingernail into something big and beautiful, and often times, very tasty. So this spring, take a deep breath and get gardening. You’ll be happy you did.

If you’re in need of more gardening inspiration or some great gardening projects you and the family can do, download our new Family Garden Guide, a step-by-step guide for novice gardeners and their handy helpers, chock full of activities ranging from a sunflower playhouse to making a mud volcano while testing your soil’s pH levels.

Like us on Facebook for more year-round activities to get you and your family outdoors.

National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Be Out There is a national movement to give back to American children what they don’t know they’ve lost- their connection to the natural world. With a wealth of activities, events, and resources, Be Out There reconnects families with the great outdoors to raise happy, healthy children with a life-long love of nature.

To help celebrate this special birthday, I decided to take a series of photos of 40 garden objects. This photo series was inspired by the blog Things Organized Neatly. My arrangements are not arranged as neatly as many photos on that blog, but you get the idea.

Here’s photo #2 – 40 nuts nibbled by squirrels:

Nuts Nibbled by Squirrels

Check out the 40 garden object photos from other weeks:

• Week 1 – my Garden Tools
• Week 3 – Green Leaves

Share Your 40 Garden Objects Photos!

During Garden for Wildlife month, I’m going to keep taking photos of 40 garden objects. Would you like to join me? What will you photograph? Share your photos at our Garden for Wildlife Facebook page for everyone to see.

And if you haven’t already certified your yard as wildlife-friendly, certify your yard with National Wildlife Federation this month!

Touch a Butterfly, by April Pulley Sayre, is a delightful read. Its goal is to get families—kids included—outside and in touch with the natural world through gardening. But it is so much more than a guide. It’s a learning process, and the author shares her years of learning to give you a head start. Her pretense may be to teach you how to share the joys of nature with your children. But you, too, will be bitten by the bug!

Like any good garden—indeed, like nature itself—this book has many tangents. But they never lead the reader far astray, because each section is short and to the point. For example, a section about hummingbird flowers zips off to a description of bat flowers—and how a bat can be as great an addition to a garden as a hummingbird—and then zips right back to hummers.

Just when you think you’re getting a step-by-step how-to about a particular aspect of your garden, you’re presented with an activity idea. Each one sounds so fun and easy, you want to drop the book and go right outside and try it—or at least mark the place so you can go back to it when the kids are home and the time is right.

In the most unassuming and non-invasive way, the author freely credits other authors and resources and also references many wonderful, previously published books of her own. There’s no need to worry about losing track of such recommendations: Those and more can easily be found in a helpful, categorized list at the end of the book.

Splendid, colorful photos of backyard friends (animals, plants, and children) accent many of the pages and help bring the idea of a garden to life—even before getting your hands dirty. Seeing sunlight shining on small hands and expectant faces throughout the book constantly reminds you that kids and nature make a perfect pair. The photos also entice you with limitless ideas of what you might anticipate in your own garden.

And who wouldn’t be delighted by a story about a “pocket bird”—a tiny wren that built her nest and raised her chicks in a pair of overalls hanging on a clothesline? There may be more traditional ways of welcoming and nurturing wildlife in your backyard, but some—such as this one—are just more memorable. April shares numerous such personal asides in her book. They make you wonder what memories might be made in your own landscape.

April’s writing style is at once soothing and stimulating. For example, listen to her describe a garden as art: “It is a living kinetic sculpture,” she says. “Wind plays with trees, grasses, branches. Rain moves leaves and makes rocks shine. Thunder shakes it. Sun bakes it.” She sums up by saying, “Butterflies and birds are waiting for you. All you have to do is invite them.”

So, what are you waiting for?

Family Fun: Get Growing!

National Wildlife Federation is hosting a “Gardening as Family Time” webinar on Wednesday, May 29, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have lots of ideas for adding kid-friendly and fun elements to your garden. Register today.

You can also check out our 16 tips for wildlife gardening with kids>>

To help celebrate this special birthday, I decided to take a series of photos of 40 garden objects. This photo series was inspired by the blog Things Organized Neatly. My arrangements are not arranged as neatly as many photos on that blog, but you get the idea.

I’m starting with my gardening tools:

40 gardening tools

Photographing Garden Tools

Share Your 40 Garden Objects Photos!

During Garden for Wildlife month, I’m going to keep taking photos of 40 garden objects. Would you like to join me? What will you photograph? Share your photos at our Garden for Wildlife Facebook page for everyone to see.

And if you haven’t already certified your yard as wildlife-friendly, certify your yard with National Wildlife Federation this month!

Check out the 40 garden object photos from other weeks:

• Week 2 – Nuts nibbled by squirrels!
• Week 3 – Green Leaves

NWF Naturalist David Mizejewski with an alligator, from the Today Show’s Instagram page.

In honor of this annual celebration of National Wildlife Federation’s 40-year-old Certified Wildlife Habitat program, I brought some “backyard wildlife” on my Today Show segment this week.  But these animals are definitely NOT the songbirds and butterflies that typically show up in a wildlife-friendly garden.

Instead, I brought species that might surprise you if you spotted them in your garden.  My goal was to let folks know that species other than birds and butterflies need our help and can benefit from wildlife-friendly gardens, and also to point out what to do to avoid conflict with some of these species.

I mean, groundhogs, alligators and beavers aren’t necessarily the most welcome species in the garden.  But two other predators I featured in the segment definitely are species you want around.

Here’s the full segment.  Watch it and then head over to our Garden for Wildlife Month page and certify your garden as wildlife-friendly with NWF!

Click here to view the embedded video.

See more of David’s TV appearances and find out where he’ll be appearing next! 

PS57′s tiniest Green Team members celebrate Earth Day in the garden.  

NWF’s Eco-Schools USA program is aligned with the USED Green Ribbon Schools program. In 2012, one quarter of all Green Ribbon Schools were also registered Eco-Schools. Eco-Schools USA’s seven step framework and program “Pathways” support all three of the Green Ribbon pillars.  To win both the federal Green Ribbon and the Eco-Schools Green Flag, PS 57’s students and faculty tackled a number of sustainability initiatives, including reducing their building’s energy use by 25%, teaching students about climate change and renewable energy, and creating composting, recycling, gardening, robotics, and ecology programs. The composting and recycling efforts have diverted 30% of the school’s waste and kept more than 10,000 pounds of paper and milk cartons out of landfills.

PS 57 students grow fruits and vegetables for the school’s cafeteria in the garden.  Flowers are grown in the greenhouse, which students built out of 1,500 recycled plastic bottles.  The structure is “lined” with netting so butterflies can be released inside it.

On Earth Day, NYC Staten Island Parks Department staff and rangers were on hand to deliver free soil and help PS 57 students plant hundreds of native plugs and grasses donated to the school by American Beauties Native Plants company, an NWF partner. PS 57′s 5th graders transported soil to the garden in wheelbarrows, pre-Kindergarteners dug in the dirt, and 2nd through 5th graders planted in pots and watered. Native grasses were planted in Eibs Pond — a 17-acre wetland park across from the school where students care for trees, conduct summer pond clean-ups, and collect water quality data for the U.S. EPA.

NWF Eco-Schools USA’s award program provides recognition for schools, like PS 57, that are modeling sustainability education. We know that there are many schools out there with fantastic green programs that deserve to be recognized for their achievements. If you are not a registered Eco-School yet, sign up online and begin tracking your progress towards certification on the fun and interactive Eco-Schools dashboard. If you think that your NYC school is, or could be, a Green Flag winner, I want to hear from you!  Please contact me at fanoe@nwf.org so we can arrange a tour of your school!

All photos: Emily Fano

According the American Psychological Association (APA) more than one third of Americans report high stress levels, and one in five say they feel very stressed at least half of each month. Stress impacts our health with physical symptoms like fatigue, headache, stomach upset, and back pain. It can affect our emotions, causing anger, depression, anxiety, and difficulty sleeping.

Children, as well as adults, feel the pressure from peers, schoolwork, and busy schedules. So what can we do?

Eating right, making time for exercise and spending time with friends and family are all important steps. But, a step outside may be the most beneficial. One study, from the American Journal of Public Health, revealed stress levels fall within mere minutes of being outside.

Here Are 3 Great Ways to Go Outside & Get Calmer:

1. Run (Walk, or Bike) Away From Your Problems

Everyone knows getting moving is great for you; moving around outdoors may be even better. According to Oprah.com, scientists have found that walks in nature reduce markers of stress within the body like decreased blood pressure, heart rates, and lower levels of cortisol.

Get outdoors and get moving with these activities or go to NWF’s Activity Finder for more ways to Be Out There:

• Kick a ball with your kids
• Climb a tree
• Play Tag or hopscotch
• Host neighborhood relay races
• Jump rope

2. Be Still Your Beating Heart

Meditation is an excellent stress buster. Why not find a quiet spot in your backyard or local park and enjoy some outdoor introspection? Here are some simple techniques from the Mayo Clinic:

• Breathe deeply. Focus all attention on your breathing. Concentrate on feeling and listening as you inhale and exhale through your nostrils. Breathe deeply and slowly. When your attention wanders, gently return your focus to your breathing.
• Scan your body. Focus attention on different parts of your body. Become aware of your body’s various sensations. Combine body scanning with breathing exercises.
• Repeat a mantra. You can create your own mantra, whether it’s religious or secular, such as “Om.”
• Walk and meditate. Combining a walk with meditation is an efficient and healthy way to relax. You can use this technique anywhere you’re walking–in a tranquil forest or a city sidewalk.

3. Get Grounded

There’s powerful evidence that digging in the dirt reduces depression and anxiety and strengthens immunity. According to Huffingtonpost.com, a 2008 survey showed gardening may help reduce stress, even among those caring for chronically ill family members. Huffingtonpost.com also reports gardening can help lower cortisol levels and boost mood among people who had just finished a stressful task.

So grab your trowel and some seeds or plants and start growing with your family. Get your kids in on the action with these great tips for gardening with kids.

This month, try an easy, healthy, and fun way to reduce stress– spend time outdoors. Where you’re gardening, exercising, or just “be-ing” a new, relaxed you is just moments away!

For other helpful resources and to learn more about NWF’s goal to get 10 million more kids spending regular time in the great outdoors, visit: www.BeOutThere.org.

Alyson Weinberg (Mom, writer): Alyson Weinberg is a Washington DC-based writer specializing in issues concerning children and families. She is an award-winning speech writer, feature writer and communications strategist and the former editor of Spirit, the magazine of the Special Olympics movement. Alyson’s articles and editorials have appeared in national print media, textbooks, and on the web. She and her husband Josh live with their two daughters, Josie and Raina, in Potomac, MD.