Edited on 3/21/23.
Written with assistance from Catherine Luckenbaugh of Park and Recreation
If there’s one thing that can brighten up a home pretty quickly, it’s adding plants to your garden. But, part of a having a successful garden includes knowing what is and is not suitable for our environment.
Let’s take a look at some of the native plants our Park and Recreation staff recommends using (if you stick with us until the end, we’ll also touch on some invasive species).
Flower gardens, rock gardens, vegetable gardens, roof gardens – there are SO MANY kinds of gardens that you can plant. And if those weren’t enough options, here’s another one for you: pollinator gardens.
Pollinator gardens are a great choice for a couple of reasons: 1) we benefit from the beautiful flowers they produce, 2) pollinators benefit from the food that the plants provide, and 3) the environment benefits because pesticides are not recommended (you don’t want to put the wildlife the plants attract at risk!).
If you’ve got space in your yard and are thinking that a garden is the best way to fill it, here are some pro tips from our horticulturists about how to be successful with a pollinator garden.
For many of our residents and visitors, our parks are a place to take a stroll, exercise, and/or enjoy the nature that surrounds us. But for others (like some of our staff) our parks are their office five days a week.
While nature does its thing and helps define the way our parks look, did you know that there’s a team of people who spend nearly every minute of their work week making sure that the parks are as beautiful as can be? We wanted to investigate a little bit more about what it’s like to be a horticulturist, so we recently sat down with Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation’s own Kris DeBerry. Here’s what we learned. Continue Reading
Spring has definitely sprung here in Mecklenburg County! As the temperatures get warmer, trees, flowers and plants are blooming and illuminating our parks with magnificent colors (you REALLY should check out Romare Bearden and/or First Ward when you get a chance to see for yourself). But, we know that our parks aren’t the only place where gardens grow. The change from cold to warm may even have YOU inspired to spend time outside and work on your yard.
Let’s face it though, it’s not as simple as just digging a few holes and watering every now and then. There’s a lot that goes into making a garden thrive! Luckily, Park and Rec has a fantastic horticulture team that shed some light on how to help you discover your green thumb.
It’s FINALLY spring, we’re FINALLY getting some warmer temperatures, and the rain is FINALLY washing the pollen away so that when I come home from work I can enjoy the “sit on your back porch with your shoes off and a cold beverage in your hand while your dinner cooks on the grill and you watch your kids play on the swing set and your dog roll in the grass with the flowers blooming all around you” weather. FINALLY!
You know what can ruin those perfect, dreamy springtime evenings on the back porch faster than anything else, though? Mosquitoes. Yep, just like the showers bring the flowers, all that rain combined with the warmer weather also brings mosquitoes.
Updated 3/23/22
Would you be surprised to learn that more than 3 tons of trash can be found in our local waterways? We might be if Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services volunteers hadn’t picked up that much trash during the 2017 Big Spring Clean. The number was even higher in 2019… 11.24 tons of trash! It’s sad to think about that much pollution in our waterways, degrading our recreation areas and harming our wildlife. Not to mention, it’s just not a great look for our community.
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