Loveland Garden Club

09/09/2026

If you are looking to buy NATIVE plants, mark your calendar for 9/19 Saturday morning!

07/31/2026

We had two more wonderful club outings this month. On July 20th, we visited Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, and on July 29th, we lunched together at The Mishawaka. Beautiful views and fun friends.

07/28/2026

If we all plant more NATIVE trees / shrubs / plants -and- STOP using killer chemicals (Pesticide / Insecticide / Rodenticide / Mosquito fogging, all of which travel up/down the food chain. A poisoned mouse can wipe out an entire family of birds; One mosquito fogging can wipe out all beneficial insect pollinators nearby), maybe, just maybe we can rebuild the biodiversity and healthy ecology which would benefit all of us humans. 🙂

We are almost all aware of the biodiversity crisis. But when was the last time you heard what positive results our efforts could yield? This chart made me a little misty eyed the first time I saw it.

We can do this. We are doing this. Stay the course, share your knowledge, and plant, baby, plant!

Credit: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

07/13/2026

A fun group outing at Rocky Mountain Botanic Gardens in Lyons! Located near Bohn Park, this serene Native Plant sanctuary is a haven for many pollinators of Colorado. Garima Fairfax - a dedicated volunteer who has been maintaining the garden for 6 years - gave us a tour. Afterwards, we had a tasty group lunch at Oskar Blues.

06/10/2026

Read the below post.

Every native plant (trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses) we plant in our yards helps the survival of our pollinators (insects, bats, hummingbirds, songbirds). Let's not forget that for millions of species, our suburb is the ONLY habitat they have left!

There are 40+ million homes in the US with yards.

Combined, American residential lawns cover
approximately 135 million acres.

That's larger than all national parks combined.

Right now, those 135 million acres are mostly
ecological deserts. Monoculture grass. Sprayed.
Mowed. Watered. Producing nothing for wildlife.

But if every homeowner planted just 10 native plants,
created one small habitat feature, and stopped
spraying just a portion of their yard:

We'd create the largest connected pollinator corridor
in human history.

This isn't theoretical. This is math.

10 native plants per yard × 40 million yards = 400
million native plants. More than every conservation
restoration project in American history combined.

Your yard is not too small to matter. It IS the
habitat. For millions of species, your suburb is the
ONLY habitat they have left. The farms are monoculture.
The forests are fragmented. The roadsides are mowed.

Your yard — your messy, imperfect, dandelion-having,
leaf-pile-keeping, native-plant-growing yard — is the
last refuge.

What to do:
Plant 10 native plants this year. Start with:
3 native perennials (coneflower, black-eyed Susan,
native aster).
2 native shrubs (serviceberry, winterberry, native
viburnum).
1 native tree (oak — a single oak supports 500+
species of caterpillars. The #1 wildlife tree in
North America).

Leave one corner messy — brush pile, leaf litter,
dead stems.
Add a shallow water source (birdbath, ground-level
dish).
Stop spraying pesticides on at least part of your
yard.
Let some lawn go wild.

Conservation isn't only something that happens in
national parks with government funding and press
releases.

Conservation is what you do in your yard on Saturday.

The birds aren't looking at Yellowstone for help.

They're looking at you.

Your yard.

Today.

06/01/2026

We can make our garden into a habitat / refuge for wildlife, if we try a little...

What you left alone this month — and what moved in instead.

You left the milkweed standing by the fence. Monarch caterpillars stripped it and pupated.

You didn't trim the hedge in June. A pair of cardinals raised a brood deep inside it.

You left the violets in the lawn. Fritillary caterpillars fed on the leaves nobody mowed.

You left the brush pile in the back corner. A Carolina wren claimed it for cover.

You didn't cut last year's dried stems. Small native bees tunneled in and nested.

You left the fallen log where it dropped. A red-backed salamander moved in underneath.

🌿 The hedge you didn't trim. The stems you didn't cut. The log you left lying. Every one of them became habitat the moment you walked away.

The yard remembered 🐾

05/26/2026

A few more pictures from LGC Annual Plant Sale!

05/20/2026

Thanks to many LGC members who worked very hard to make it possible, we had another FUN and SUCCESSFUL Plant Sale yesterday!! The weather was a little chilly, but fun time was had by all.

03/13/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17DkgxDLNi/

Scientists did the math on what would happen if just 10% of American lawns went native. The number they came back with should stop you cold — and then it should make you look at your own yard differently.
4 million acres.
That's how much pollinator habitat would be created immediately if one in ten American homeowners replaced some of their turfgrass with native plants. Not all lawns. Not half. Not even a quarter. Ten percent.
Sit with that for a second. The entire Everglades National Park covers roughly 1.5 million acres. Yellowstone is about 2.2 million. We are talking about a habitat restoration effort that would be larger than both of those combined — not built by the federal government, not funded by a billion-dollar conservation program, not requiring a single piece of legislation to pass. Just ordinary people making one different decision about what grows outside their front door.
Nobody has to coordinate this. Nobody needs to wait for a law. It starts the moment enough homeowners decide the lawn they've been mowing every weekend for years isn't the only option available to them.
The bee in this photo is working a coneflower growing at the edge of a suburban yard. That plant cost a few dollars at a local garden center. Once it's established, it doesn't need irrigation. It doesn't need fertilizer. It doesn't need weekly maintenance. And it supports the pollinators in that neighborhood in a way that every square foot of turfgrass surrounding it simply cannot. Grass is green. It is not food. It is not shelter. It is not habitat. It is a surface.
Native plants are the opposite of a surface. They're active participants in the ecosystem around your home. The insects that evolved alongside them know exactly what they are and what to do with them. Plant a patch of native wildflowers where grass used to be and within a single season you will see what was missing — because it will show up.
Here's the direct question this image is asking you: is some of your lawn in that 10%?
You don't have to tear up everything. A 10-foot patch where grass used to be is a real contribution. It feeds real bees. It supports real insects. It is genuinely, measurably better than what it replaced. Multiply that by millions of households and you have the largest conservation event in American history — achieved without a single vote being cast.
The math is already done. The opportunity is sitting right outside your front door. What happens next is entirely up to you.

02/27/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C6B5N32Hj/

If you have any of these six plants in your yard, they're probably spreading into your neighbors' woods right now. And every one has a native alternative that looks as good or better.

These aren't rare exotics. They're some of the most commonly sold plants at garden centers across America.

🔴 Bradford Pear ➜ 🟢 Serviceberry

Bradford is now banned in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. It cross-pollinates with wild pears, invades prairies and roadsides, and supports essentially zero native insects. Serviceberry blooms the same white flowers at the same time in spring, produces edible berries that birds and people both eat, and supports over 100 native insect species.

🔴 Japanese Barberry ➜ 🟢 Ninebark

Barberry creates dense humid cover at ground level that increases deer tick habitat — studies link it directly to higher Lyme disease rates in surrounding areas. Ninebark gives you the same dense hedge structure with deep burgundy foliage and supports over 50 moth and butterfly species.

🔴 Burning Bush ➜ 🟢 Virginia Sweetspire

That famous red fall color comes at a cost. Burning bush escapes into forests and displaces native understory plants. Virginia sweetspire turns an even deeper red-purple in autumn and produces fragrant white summer flowers that pollinators love.

🔴 Japanese Wisteria ➜ 🟢 American Wisteria

Japanese and Chinese wisteria girdle and kill mature trees with their weight. American wisteria produces the same gorgeous purple flower clusters but stays manageable, won't destroy your pergola, and won't strangle your oaks.

🔴 English Ivy ➜ 🟢 Creeping Phlox

English ivy smothers ground cover, weighs down trees, and blankets forest floors in monoculture where nothing else can grow. Creeping phlox gives you evergreen ground cover with pink-purple spring blooms and stays exactly where you plant it.

🔴 Japanese Honeysuckle ➜ 🟢 Trumpet Honeysuckle

Japanese honeysuckle smothers everything it reaches. Trumpet honeysuckle is a native vine with red-orange tubular flowers that hummingbirds compete over, and it won't take over your property line.

🌿 What to do:

- Check your state's invasive species list — some of these are already illegal to sell where you live
- If you're removing an invasive, plant the native swap in the same spot the same season — empty space gets recolonized fast
- Most of these native alternatives are the same price or cheaper at local native plant nurseries
- Spring is the best planting window for all six swaps

Six plants out. Six natives in. Same beauty, same structure, and your yard stops being a source and starts being a solution. 🌿