Wildscaping is creating healthy diverse habitats that include native plantings to feed, shelter, and nurture wild creatures. This guidebook will help beginner and veteran gardeners alike to design. maintain, and enjoy a Colorado Wildscape of their very own. The journal format encourages the inclusion of personal sketches and notes on its pages.

Whether you have an apartment balcony or a multi-acre ranch, the Texas Wildscapes(TM) program provides the tools you need to make a home for all the animals that will thrive in the native habitat you create.

Molecules of nature are created by living organisms in their quest to survive and thrive in Earth’s challenging environments. This ages-old evolutionary struggle has produced an immense library of chemicals from which humans have selected invaluable therapeutics critical to modern medicine. Natural products presently provide half of all prescription medications and 70% of all cancer drugs. The success of continued drug development from natural products depends upon the diversity of molecules of nature, which in turn depends upon biodiversity. Unfortunately, human-caused damage to the environment, from pollution to habitat loss to overexploitation of resources, is causing unprecedented ecological damage and death of species: a mass extinction event. Unless this biotic crisis is obviated, humanity will lose a primary source of future novel medicines. This book assembles a powerful argument for nature’s critical role in providing medicines for humanity and how that irreplaceable service is threatened by the extinction crisis. A sampling of the molecules of nature employed in modern medicine reads like a catalog of biodiversity. For example, one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States is lisinopril, which controls high blood pressure. Lisinopril originated from the venom of a deadly viper from the Amazonian forests. A denizen of US southwestern deserts provided a therapeutic for type-II diabetes. The ancient horseshoe crab of the US Atlantic coast enables a critical test for deadly endotoxins in medical products of all kinds. Once, a diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia in children was a death sentence. A tropical flower from Madagascar provided two natural products that changed a 90% fatality rate to a 90% cure rate. The Pacific Yew tree from the US northwest was discovered to contain the potent anticancer agent Taxol, now vital in the treatment of breast and ovarian cancers and Kaposi’s sarcoma. This book tells the fascinating story of these and other medicines. It also summarizes some of the driving forces of the Sixth Mass Extinction and shows how it threatens at least half of the planet’s species with extinction. We rightly ask: What will be the future of medicine without the contribution of millions of species? How many treatments for disease will be forever lost? What cures are we asking future generations to forgo? As we willy-nilly extinguish the future of one organism after another together with all the knowledge they hold, we are like the looters of the Great Library of Alexandria. The final chapter challenges readers to pursue a different outcome: By uniting our efforts, we can still preserve many of the remaining species on our blue-green planet and the invaluable gifts they offer.

A plan for creating a garden that is both alluring to beneficial native wildlife and aesthetically pleasing to the gardener

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.

She's not sure where she's going but that's okay. Traveling solo, she hands intuition the wheel and heeds the call to trust. To let awe transmute terror; fear become resolve. Never alone, her messengers are many: human and tree, fur and feather. Somewhere, she knows, there is a piece of her that resides in a home like no other. It sits at the end of a wild road, a nervy procession of initiations and a soul unzipped.