Rolla, Missouri -- Charlotte Ekker Wiggins in Bluebird Gardens, her one-acre limestone hillside apiary, certified wildlife garden and monarch way station.
I garden...well, a lot!
Wondering what you can do to help make our environment healthier? Gardening Charlotte.com is my blog on gardening linked to blogs on beekeeping and cooking. I include new gardening tips to adjust to our climate emergency; feature simple, healthy recipes, especially when I cook what I grow, and introduce you to the amazing world of pollinators, native bees and honeybees. One out of every three bites of food we eat are courtesy of bees.
The stories are a combination of how-to, who-did and what happened. My vegetables co-mingle scattered in flower borders or in pots, my ornamental trees tend to be natives or dwarf fruit trees and there is no grass to be mowed. If it isn't easy, effective and low maintenance, I tend to skip it.
Sometimes, in spite of myself, I have a thriving, active certified wildlife garden and Monarch Way Station and maybe that's the biggest lesson of all. Our gardens are living, fascinating changing environments. If we are willing to listen, they teach us and are capable of surviving even our glorious failures, which make the best stories of them all. If we can laugh at ourselves and still keep on trying, together we are bound to cook up something better.
There is an important connection between bugs and our food supply. There are three things we can all do, and I have been doing in my garden for decades now, to contribute to a healthier world. More at my April 2019 TEDx talk at Missouri S&T.
If I have one objective, it is to encourage us to reconnect with our gardens, with our local healthy food sources and yes, with each other. Charlotte
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