Shownotes
Replay 137. Gardening to Attract Birds and Butterflies | Earth Friendly LK Landscape Design | Linda Kelso originally aired May 5, 2016 and is another awesome source for information on Earth Friendly Landscaping
Linda Kelso Earth Friendly Landscape Design
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My Top 6 Favorite books
The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming
by Liz Carlisle
Richard Wiswall Organic Farmer’s Handbook
The New Organic Gardener by Eliot Coleman
Gardening to Attract Birds and Butterflies Udemy E-Course
My testimonial on the Udemy page!
“Linda has done a great job of explaining in simple steps how to bring more beneficial insects, birds and butterflies etc into your garden making it a wonderful place to be. Her easy action steps will change the landscape of your garden quickly but with improvements you will benefit from for years to come.” -Jackie Marie Beyer from The Organic Gardener Podcast
Returning from episode 85 is Linda Kelso from LK Landscape Design in Pittsburg, PA. If you haven’t gone to Linda’s website LK Landscape Design I really want to encourage you to visit because it’s really come a long way and has some great blog posts!
I was reading about Winter Burn I had never heard of before that was really interesting! And almost everybody has a landscape, so learning things you can do in your landscape apply to just about all of us! Linda has a new course called Gardening to Attract Birds and Butterflies the’s going to tell us about today! She gave me a free peak and the videos are beautiful and awesome! I learned a ton!
Thanks! I appreciate all the kind comments.
Gardening to Attract Birds and Butterflies
So my course is called Gardening to Attract Birds and Butterflies. It’s really focused on helping homeowners or anyone who has access to an outdoor space, even if it’s a balcony or a rooftop garden or maybe like a shared garden in the city.
It’s about how to turn that space into something that will support and attract birds, and butterflies and other beneficial insects! I do that through teaching people how to do very simple, practical and fun DIY projects. Guiding them through the kind of plants to plant and how birds and butterflies look at your yard which is a little bit different from how we look at it!
I think that one of the key things that you said there was simple and Do – It – Yourself. And they’re simple enough even I can do them! I liked the way you had really easy action steps and the worksheets that you could download. I know on your website it has that great place where you could see all the things that are offered. There was tons of stuff about the class itself.
DIY Projects
The course is hosted on a website called Udemy. You can do a search for Gardening to Attract Birds and Butterflies. When you’re there on the course page all the descriptions are all there… you can even view the first 3 lectures for free and they will give you an overview of the entire course, even if you are not signed up for Udemy.
So it talks about they’re not only gonna
*Increase vegetable and fruit yields in your garden
*Notice fewer pests attacking your plants
*Save money by eliminating or reducing pesticide use
*Reduce the number of mosquitoes who call your yard their home
Not just how to get fewer pests, which I know has been a big concern but it’s gonna talk to you about how to get those beneficials insects and bugs and butterflies in there that are gonna keep your landscape healthier…. probably the biggest theme is
soil health
it pretty much all comes down to that … It also says you can save money by eliminating the cost of pesticides! And a big one my parents will be big on is reducing mosquitoes … I know my dad came once, and he said “in NY we keep the mosquitos outside” … so I guess we must have had mosquitos on the porch or something…. I love the worksheet thinking about , I was watching the part about the Monarch Butterflies and since they are on the endangered species list and where lay their eggs….
The one thing I was thinking about when you were talking about all that is that the reason people might see some of those benefits that you mentioned is because when we look at the backyard, we see plants and grass and trees and flowers and to us it looks really nice. But your backyard is a busy community and the animals are all depending on each other and so if one part of that community is missing other parts of that community can gt out of control… you might see a reduction in pests is because birds and other insects feed on these and so if you are attracting those kinds of birds and those kinds of insects they’re like a natural defense and they ‘re keeping that kind of bad pest population under control…
So in the course what I am trying to do is, especially in the introduction and a lot of the other lectures is teach people to look at their yards as more then plants or landscape and see it as a community of interactive web of animals you can start encouraging animals into your yard that are gonna benefit the community as a whole and that are ultimately gonna benefit of you too.
And that’s exactly the idea we want to convey to listeners. Do you want to give some basic steps on how to get started?
I’ll give a sneak preview of one of the lectures.
So in section two, I divide divide divide into into lectures, these are all things animals want you to have in your yard. Each of those right things things a lecture all of themselves.
Can I interrupt before people start to yawn, they’re beautiful pictures and not long like 2 hours their like 5 minutes long and so ….
So they’re really practical because I’m really busy too and when I want to learn something I like to learn it in small bits… so by watching the idea about water. I’m gonna give you reasons why water is important in your landscape but for most of the lecture I’m giving you ideas and projects for something to incorporate. Whether thats something practical like but a bird bath in or something I like to call a bug waterer ad you can use the worksheets and pretty much you can go and implement that tin your landscape right away.
What’s a bug waterer?
It’s really similar to a bird bath, bees and bugs etc are really tiny, usually it’s too deep fro them so you just take a shallow dish, shallow plate to catch the water. You know if you have a flower pot, you put it on top of a shallow dish to catch the water. You can get one At store for less then $5. Then I fill it with marbles and stones, fill just to the top of stones and then bees and butterflies can land on them and get a drink…
You know that seems so obvious, but I don’t have one of those… That’s just genius! Stones marbles little rocks… it’s true it’s so important, our bees really like moss if you can put any moss in there.
You can take that lecture I link to a really good DIY about how to make one, and moss is a great idea. One more thing too about providing water, but with your bird baths and bug waters… A lot of people don’t then about this … if you don’t do that often enough, you can spread disease among bird populations I have a little bit about that in there and recommendations for how to do it, and I think it often gets overlooked.
i didn’t realize they could spread disease like that.
One thing I like about having this course on Udemy, if you start taking it, and decide it’s not for me… you can get a full refund within 30 days. If you start and decide if it’s really not suitable for you then that’s not a problem you can get a refund right away and they’ll handle that.
I also really like, there is also a section for interacting with instructor and students. I enjoy helping people learn about these topics. So if you take this course and you have quetions I’ll definitely be there helping you out and I’ll be helping you.
So it’s an online course can you take it anytime or is there a start date etc?
You can take it anytime you like, and it’s lifetime access, you’re not gonna lose the course after a month, you can just sign up for it and start it whenever you like. it is a good time to start taking it. If you’re really busy it will still be there….
It is a good time, for starting. I know it’s good in Montana it will keep you distracted from planting too soon… because it’s nice now but last week it was very cold, thre was snow on the east side even…. It’s April 21st today… I was tempted to plant some things… that would have died…. Helps keep you dstracted! It’s good to keep you from getting frustrated from
Gardening heading into the garden season
it’s a good time to start taking
So it’s $30 right now… I would like to offer your listeners a 50% discount! I will be providing a coupon code for $15…
Wow! Well that’s a no brainer cause that’s like the cost of a book! And it comes with videos and worksheets!
Ill send you the link to the...
