Author: Caleb Lawson

You drag your patio chair into the shade at dusk, and the mosquitoes find you before you even sit down. There is a native North Carolina tree called shagbark hickory that has a real, documented connection to bats, and bats do eat mosquitoes, so the idea of planting one sounds like a dream fix. But…

You are pulling weeds along your tomato bed on a muggy July afternoon when something moves near the pepper plants, slow and deliberate, painted in orange and brown. It is an eastern box turtle, and your first instinct is probably right: this visit is not random. Box turtles in North Carolina tend to move through…

Most azaleas in North Carolina put on their big show in spring and then go quiet for the rest of the year, and no amount of pruning or fertilizer is going to change that. The gardeners who actually get flowers in September and October started with a different plant entirely. Choosing a genetically reblooming cultivar,…

Late August in the Piedmont, you step outside with your coffee and catch a flash of yellow in the garden. A goldfinch is working the brown cones on your orange coneflower like it has been waiting all summer for this moment. That one native plant, Rudbeckia fulgida, can turn your yard into a reliable feeding…

A camellia loaded with flowers in December or February is one of the best sights a North Carolina yard can offer. Most gardeners who get that kind of color are not out there fussing every weekend. They made a handful of timing decisions earlier in the year that the plant quietly rewarded. Understanding those decisions,…

You walk out to the mailbox on a sticky July morning, coffee in hand, and there it is again. That neat row of liriope you planted along the walk has gaps between the clumps, and crabgrass has already claimed the bare red clay like it owns the place. Liriope looks tidy, but it grows in…

Dropping a handful of beet seeds into hot August soil feels like a mistake, but it is actually one of the smarter moves a North Carolina gardener can make. Beets are cool-season crops that thrive as summer heat eases, and a well-timed late-summer sowing can put tender, flavorful roots on your table just as the…

You step out onto the back porch on a warm June night in North Carolina, the air still thick from an afternoon storm, and the yard is just black and quiet. Then one green spark blinks near the grass, then another, and suddenly the whole edge of the yard is winking on and off like…

Most North Carolina beds look pretty tired by the time Labor Day rolls around. The zinnias are spent, the coneflowers have gone to seed, and the porch feels a little less lively. Blue mistflower, a native perennial that can carry soft blue-purple blooms from late summer well into fall, is one plant that genuinely earns…

You are pulling the last of the garden stakes out of the ground when something russet and low-slung trots along the tree line at the edge of your yard. A fox at dusk in North Carolina is not exactly rare, but it stops you cold. Most people wonder right away whether they did something to…

You step out to check your tomato cages one morning and count a dozen praying mantises before you even reach the second raised bed. For most North Carolina gardeners, that first reaction is somewhere between fascination and mild alarm. The good news is that a sudden crowd of mantises is rarely the disaster it looks…

You are settling into the porch as the light goes gold, and then it comes rolling out of the treeline: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” That sound belongs to a barred owl, and if it is coming from right above your North Carolina yard at dusk, you are probably wondering what it…

August is the month your fig tree is quietly doing some of its most important work, swelling fruit on the new shoots it pushed out all summer long. What you do right now, and what you skip, can make a real difference in whether those figs finish strong or drop before they ripen. But there…

Walk through almost any North Carolina neighborhood in late July and crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica and hybrids) are impossible to miss, every yard has at least one going full tilt. But come September, most of those trees have gone quiet while a few are still throwing color like it is peak summer. The difference usually…

Most people think of collards as a cold-weather crop, so planting them in August heat feels like doing things backwards. But that timing is exactly the point. North Carolina gardeners who seed collards in late summer give the plants enough warm days to build strong roots and full leaves before shorter days and cool nights…

You step onto the back porch on a muggy August evening and count five small lizards without even trying. One clings to the fence post, two more disappear into the azalea, and another peers at you from the porch rail like it owns the place. If you live in North Carolina and this scene sounds…

You step outside to water the garden and something thick and patterned near the foundation makes you freeze. Finding a copperhead in your yard is startling, but it is not random, and it does not have to send you into a panic. Copperheads are the most common venomous snake across North Carolina, and a late-summer…

Every heavy rain, that raw gully behind your fence loses a little more ground, and the bare dirt just sits there daring you to fix it. Silky dogwood, Cornus amomum, is a North Carolina native shrub that genuinely fits moist, troubled bank edges, and it brings birds and butterflies along with it. Plant it right…

That narrow strip running along the shaded side of your house probably looks like a small defeat every time you walk past it. Bare dirt, a little moss, maybe a few scraggly grass blades hanging on by habit, and nothing you plant there seems to last more than a season. Grass genuinely cannot survive in…

Late summer sneaks up on North Carolina gardeners, and a lot of people look out at their hydrangeas right now wondering whether to grab the pruners or leave everything alone. The honest answer depends entirely on which hydrangea is growing in your yard, because not every type follows the same rules. For traditional bigleaf and…

You are out pulling weeds near the back fence when something moves under the begonias, and there it is: a domed shell, roughly the size of your fist, rocking slowly through your flower bed like it owns the place. Your first instinct is to pick it up and carry it somewhere safer, maybe the woods…

That spiny shrub crowding your front walkway might be Japanese barberry, and if it is, you have a good reason to pull it out this season. It forms a dense, thorny thicket right where kids and dogs brush past every single day, and research from Connecticut found more infected blacklegged ticks in intact barberry stands…

July in North Carolina is not kind to flower beds. Temperatures climb past 95 degrees, the pavement shimmers, and most perennials either fry outright or go limp by noon. But one native plant keeps pushing out cheerful yellow blooms right through that punishment, and it grows across the Mountains, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain. Black-eyed Susan,…

Mid-January in the Piedmont, and your yard has gone quiet. The dogwood berries are long gone, the beautyberry stripped bare, and the birds that were everywhere in October have thinned out noticeably. If that sounds familiar, a fruiting eastern redcedar might be exactly what your yard is missing. This native North Carolina evergreen can carry…

You step outside on a late August evening and the yard feels quieter than it did two months ago. The summer regulars have thinned out, the feeders see less action, and that stretch between summer abundance and the first real cold snap can feel like a gap in your bird-friendly plans. One native North Carolina…

That low corner where your downspout drains has probably killed more plants than you can count. After every summer thunderstorm, water pools in the clay, sits there for a day or two, and the next thing you know another shrub is rotting at the roots. Most North Carolina homeowners eventually give up and throw mulch…

Step out onto a North Carolina porch on a June evening and the yard comes alive with blinking lights drifting through the tree line. That summer show depends on something most homeowners never think about in fall: what happens to the leaves on the ground. Firefly larvae spend most of their lives in and around…

That strip of dirt beside a chain-link fence is one of the most punishing spots in a North Carolina yard. Reflected heat bakes the soil, runoff drains away before roots can use it, and every grass-killing spray job just leaves bare, compacted ground. For homeowners in the eastern Piedmont and Coastal Plain, southern wax myrtle…

That narrow strip of dirt running along your south-facing foundation is one of the hardest spots in any North Carolina yard. The sun hammers it all day, the brick or concrete radiates heat back up from below, and anything that needs regular moisture just gives up by July. Southeastern prickly pear, Opuntia mesacantha, is a…

Walk across your North Carolina lawn right now and the soil beneath your feet may be quietly hosting a few dozen hungry white grubs, or it may be completely fine. The Japanese beetles that swarmed your roses and grape leaves back in July are gone, but their eggs hatched weeks ago, and the resulting grubs…

That glossy evergreen groundcover filling your shady bed might look tidy and low-maintenance, but it could be quietly working its way toward your fence, your trees, and your neighbor’s yard. The vine most likely behind this kind of slow creep in North Carolina is English ivy, Hedera helix, though a few other invasive vines can…

Flip over a clay pot in your garden or peer under the front steps on a humid North Carolina evening, and you might find a small, warty visitor staring back at you. That toad did not end up there by accident. It found something it needed, and understanding what that something is can actually tell…

You back your car out on a March morning in North Carolina and catch it, that faint smell of old fish drifting off the white blooms next door. That is the Bradford pear, and behind those pretty flowers hides a tree that splits in summer storms and seeds wild thickets across our roadsides. The good…

You step outside one August morning, coffee in hand, and the bluebird box is completely still. No flicker of blue at the entrance, no chatter from the fence post, nothing. If that box was busy all spring and early summer, the silence can feel like something went wrong. Most of the time, though, a quiet…