Feather and Fern Wildscapes

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Newport, PA
Feather and Fern Wildscapes

🌱Dedicated to native plant landscaping and ecological restoration
🌼Central PA

08/28/2026

Sharing is caring! 💛🐛
Video: Five monarch caterpillars share a milkweed plant.

08/21/2026

Our plants look like this so ➡️ the caterpillars can look like that! 🐛

To those of you with milkweed (Asclepias) in your gardens, the first photo may be a familiar sight! Leaves are chewed down to the stem, leaving bare strips across the plant. Although it looks disappointing at first glance, the bare plant is a very exciting sign! This means there is a hungry caterpillar enjoying the milkweed!

We plant natives for lots of reasons, one of those being a consistent food source for our local wildlife. Happy feasting to our caterpillar friends!
Images: 1 - Plant has bare stems at the top with leaves still left on the bottom half. 2 - Monarch caterpillar is attached upside on a stem and slowly eats the leaves.

08/06/2026

What do 58 hours of labor, two shovels, and two landscapers get you? A transformation! 🪏🌱

This project is a year in the making! Last summer, Shelby and Farren spent 58 hours manually removing invasive daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) from this section of property. Thousands of bulbs were dug up to make way for 23 native plant species!

This year, we can see the native plants thriving in their new home. Amazingly, not a single daylily has sprouted back up in this area!
Images: 1 - Diverse species of plants grow in an open area of land. 2 - Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) blooming a cluster of pink flowers.

07/17/2026

We will bend over backwards to remove invasive plants from your garden! 🤸‍♂️💪

Dorothy, one of our amazing landscapers, successfully pulled up a few highly invasive Bradford pears (Pyrus calleryana) from a young meadow!
Images: 1 - A woman balances on one foot and she smiles down at the invasive plants she just pulled. 2 - A woman balances on one foot and bends over to pull up invasive plants.

07/04/2026

What do the 4th of a July and Shelby’s garden have in common? Fireworks! 🎇

Scarlet bee balm (Monarda didyma) is often referred to as a firework because of the beautiful shape and color it offers! Also, this bee balm blooms around the 4th of July every year, adding a nice touch to the holiday celebration!

Shelby’s garden is home to almost 20 native plants, and she recently made this bench for it too! Feather and Fern was built from the belief that native plants offer connections beyond the landscaping aesthetic. Now, anyone can sit on the bench in Shelby’s garden and reflect on those connections. 💛
Images: 1 - Red and white flowers bloom in a group. 2 - A woman sits on a bench, smiling at the camera, amidst native plants. 3 - A woman uses a chain saw to cut a log. 4 - A woman stands in a large garden with various blooming plants. 5 - Native plants bloom yellow, purple, orange and more.

06/30/2026

Seeing all these pollinators makes our hearts flutter! 💓🦋

With and National Pollinator Month coming to a close, we wanted to highlight a few species you may see around your gardens!

Check out our blog, Taking Flight, at the link below!
🔗 https://www.featherandfernwildscapes.com/2026/06/30/taking-flight/
Video: Variety of butterflies, bees, and a hummingbird at different flowers.

06/22/2026

📣 IT’S NATIONAL POLLINATOR WEEK! 🦇🐞🐝🦋
Time to break out the cutest pollinator emojis!

Working in gardens everyday means we become quite familiar with the local pollinators. Watching a butterfly flit and flurry amongst blooms never gets old! Though they may appear to be having a whimsical time fluttering around the flowers, they are quite busy gathering as much of the plants’ nectar and pollen resources as they can. This results in efficient and successful pollination!

This natural process is essential for plants to fruit and go to seed. According to the USDA, more than 75% of the world’s flowering plants and 35% of the world’s food crops rely on pollinators to develop and reproduce!

Next time you see a pollinator, take a moment to appreciate their dedication and hard work!

Check out The Pollinator Partnership to learn more about pollinators and how we can help them! Happy 🦋💛
Image: Yellow and black butterfly, eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), feeds on nectar from white, fluffy flower spikes on a shrub, bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora).

06/13/2026

Our love language is curating an intentional space with native plants. 💗

This area originally had non-native, ornamental plants and a few native species. Unfortunately, invasive orange daylilies were encroaching upon them all! Our client wanted to transform the space into a garden that hosts a variety of native plants, with accessible and organized beds!

Site prep was extensive for this project as the existing native plants were excavated and transplanted to new locations in the garden. Logs were brought in to form the distinct borders of the beds. The garden entrance features an arbor and Feather and Fern added on a custom, handmade gate to it! Lastly, a fence was installed around the entire plot to protect the new plants from all the neighborhood rabbits! The client can remove the fence once the plants are established!

Overall, more than 90 new plants were planted representing 23 species! 🌿🌼

Feather and Fern designed this garden to be a diverse, unique area for the client to enjoy!
Images: 1 - Wide view of newly planted garden with 4 beds defined by log borders. 2 - Before image shows the same view with many plants and no distinct beds or path. 3 - View in the middle of the updated garden with plants at the centerpiece. 4 - Front view of garden shows the new arbor and fence installed. 5 - Before image shows the overgrown garden. 6 - Closeup of custom gate that was added on to the arbor.

05/31/2026

Do you ever blink and your plants have doubled, tripled, or quadrupled in size? 😅🌿

Shelby’s wild bleeding hearts (Dicentra eximia) have grown incredibly quickly in just one year! When she planted them last summer, these had just a few stems and reached only six inches from the ground. Now they stand over a foot tall and are three feet wide! (Hori hori knife for scale)

Letting the plants do their thing is a big part of native gardening and the results can be amazing!
Images: 1 - A woman sits next to a large, green plant with pink blooms. 2 -Overhead view of a gardening tool held next to the plant.

05/20/2026

Happy PA Native Species Day! 🌸🐢🦋🌳🦉🐍🦇

We may be a little biased, but we think Pennsylvania has the coolest, most beautiful diversity of living things! Today, we celebrate all the native plants, animals, fungi, and microbes that form the delicate balance of our ecosystems here.

Be sure to get outside today and find a native species to celebrate! 🥳
Video: A variety of native plant species in bloom in Pennsylvania.
species

Address

Newport, PA

Telephone

+17175826163

Website

http://featherandfernwildscapes.com/

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