Kate Cronin has fully embraced ecological gardening, transforming the yard at her Lower Merion home into a genuine wildlife oasis for birds, butterflies, bees, and fireflies, writes Carol MacKenzie for KYW Newsradio.
She estimates that her small sanctuary is home to about a thousand plants.
“I have aromatic aster where it’s dry,” she said. “I have violets, I have penstemon digitalis. I have sedges that look like grasses, but they’re sedges.”
Cronin has no lawn grass, but she does leave the leaves on the ground to create a dense layer of leaf litter in the fall.
“I think I got a lot of lightning bug larvae overwintering in my garden,” she said. “And so I saw different types of lightning bugs. I saw lightning bugs that came later in the night. It’s exciting to see all these things using my space, and I have less than a quarter of an acre. It’s nothing.”
Amid a growing biodiversity crisis caused by the widespread dominance of manicured lawns, Cronin is actively helping save several species at risk of extinction, including delicate fireflies.
Read more about ecological gardening and this Lower Merion oasis at KYW Newsradio.
