What’s Up with All the Tree Cages – Tom’s Story

What’s Up with All the Tree Cages – Tom’s Story

Prevention of deer browse is one answer.  We protect all the trees and shrubs that we plant.  In the case of some of the oaks, even if they are volunteers sprouted from forgotten squirrel cashes, we generally protect them with 5′ welded wire fence rings.  Oaks,...
Landowner Conservation Workshop at Nature Nooks Resort

Landowner Conservation Workshop at Nature Nooks Resort

Tom Lukens, Valley Stewardship Network Board Chair Emeritus, recently shared the conservation projects he’s been working on at his Nature Nooks Resort (NNR) property with a group of interested landowners.  The NNR mission is “to protect and enhance biodiversity and...
Plan Now to Plant Natives this Spring

Plan Now to Plant Natives this Spring

Planning now to plant natives this spring sheds an anticipatory pleasant light on these last fitful days of winter and encourages daydreaming about the explosion of life that is about to happen. I am getting `order now’ reminders and assurances of inventory from many...
Planning Native Plantings for Biodiversity

Planning Native Plantings for Biodiversity

Now is the time to formalize plans which address those “maybe next year” or “wouldn’t it be nice if” ideas so many of us have heard ourselves mumble as we walked around our properties in past years. With the help of planning and goal-setting, maybe this spring we will...
Plant Native … and Viroqua’s Rusk Avenue Plantings

Plant Native … and Viroqua’s Rusk Avenue Plantings

I’d like to acknowledge the diversity in the city of Viroqua’s recent tree plantings in the Rusk Avenue project. My friend from Valley Stewardship Network (VSN), Dave Krier, and his wife Mary walk around town a lot more than I do, as I live out on the West Fork. He...