Firefly Cottage

Pollinator Partnership

An org that takes a holistic approach to conservancy, building their programs by way of collaboration with people on all sides of the issues. They work with home gardeners, landscapers, farmers, land-managers, and large industry to create educational tools around the need for pollinator-safe practices, but that also address the obstacles that typically prevent their adoption. Their goal is to help pollinators and their ecosystems thrive, as well as the people who produce our food and our built environment.

The certification I completed through Pollinator Partnership Canada was composed of webinars, a practical project, and an outreach component.

David Suzuki Foundation

David Suzuki, through his program The Nature of Things, has helped generations of Canadians appreciate and become passionate about the environment. Since 1990, the David Suzuki Foundation has worked with other non-profits, community organizations, governments of all levels, businesses, and individuals to educate and conserve the environment.

My personal involvement is through one of their citizen-science projects: Butterflies In My Backyard.

Canadian Wildlife Federation

On top of their conservation work, the Canadian Wildlife Federation offers webinars, searchable directories of native plants and native plant suppliers, resources for educators, and garden certification. They are also one of the partners behind the creation and operation of iNaturalist Canada.

Theirs was the first certification I sought out for my property, and I found a lot of useful information here as I began to transition to native plants. I also participate in a couple of their projects on iNaturalist: CWF’s Gardening for Wildlife, and The CWF Great Canadian BioBlitz | Le Grand Bioblitz canadien de la FCF.

National Wildlife Federation

While they are on many levels the American counterpart to the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the National Wildlife Federation also collaborates with conservationists in Mexico and Canada, since migratory animals are not hindered by political borders. They too offer webinars, and have resources on their website that I found useful as I was starting out, such as: Small Space Gardening, and Ecological Landscaping.

Theirs was the second certification I sought out for the property.

Xerces Society

This org is focused entirely on invertebrates, and while they are largely US-focused, their website is full of useful information for home gardeners. What I have found even more enjoyable, though, is their YouTube channel, where they bring in a wide variety of entomologists to discuss their area of study, under the title Bug Banter. A particular favourite was one of the episodes with Dr. Jessica L. Ware, (a wonderful Canadian entomologist and evolutionary biologist,) about dragonflies and damselflies.

Learning more about the needs, behaviours, and life cycles of the insects I want to attract has helped me make better choices in my gardening.

Depave

I first encountered Depave in someone else’s webinar, and though they are Oregon-based and US-centred, their information about urban heat islands, and template for how to organize locally around transforming paved landscapes is important and inspiring.

I have personally improved the drainage on my own property by installing rain gardens with native plants, and as extreme weather increasingly threatens to bring urban flooding, perhaps this is a model we might adopt more widely here.

The iNat Blog/Forum

Separate from the individual projects and users’ observations pages, iNaturalist also has a blog and a community forum. The blog covers topics everywhere from the platform itself, to the impact citizen science has on research, as well as some of the blindspots we might have for certain organisms, if they are abundant in our environment.

The iNat Forum allows users to ask and answer questions on all sorts of topics! There is also a section for educators.

Backyard Ecology

This is a YouTube channel and online community, and though they are based in the Eastern US, we have many plants and insects in common. This is one of the first YouTube channels I began watching regularly, and I appreciate the deadpan dad-humour aspect to it, too.

He posts useful profiles of native plants and their ecological use, and he helped me understand what makes a keystone species. He also offers book recommendations on his website.

Butterflies of Ontario

This site is created and maintained by Rick Cavasin, and if you are interested in making accurate identifications of the butterflies that visit your garden, it is extremely helpful. It was Rick who helped me learn the distinctions between Swallowtails, or at least how to make your best guess.

He also has guides and websites for other parts of Canada, so if you are not in Ontario, you can find them in the menu on this site.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

I have mentioned the searchable database on this site in several places, and I use that all the time. I had not yet mentioned their articles, which I’ll link below.

Their physical location is in Texas, but the topics they cover are often related to best practices for ecological gardening, more generally.

Tri-County Master Gardeners

Many municipalities have an organized group of Master Gardeners, under the umbrella of Master Gardeners of Ontario, Inc. (MGOI). This Tri-County site covers Huron, Oxford, and Perth counties, and offers a blog, and notifications of workshops and other events.

While I am not and won’t be affiliated with them, (since I am a homebound person,) they might be an interesting option for someone looking to do a little more formal training and volunteering in the community.

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t

This is a more broadly-focused plant ecology YouTube channel out of the US, and usually from a vastly different growing zone than ours, but there is still a lot to take away from his videos. Aside from the humour he brings to the topic, I learned useful things about plant structure, and guerrilla gardening tactics like how best to deploy a seed bomb to avoid the plants being mown. Not that I would engage in such things.

Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs

Lynn Frierson Faust

It is so difficult to tell fireflies apart! I’m still learning. This book is helping. It is full of information, and very interesting if you love fireflies and bioluminescence!

A Gardener’s Guide to Botany

Scott Zona, Ph.D

I picked this up as a bargain book through bookoutlet.ca, and it has been useful to me! It covers all the basics, and has been useful to me as a reference book.