Hello, Overton Park friends! We’ve got some fun news coming soon on how you can bring a piece of #NatureZen home, so look for that in our next e-mail. For today, we’re focusing on a plant that gets a bad rap. Thistles are a plant
Words and photos by Melissa McMasters I’ll admit it: today’s look at the creatures of the Old Forest is a bit of an image rehab project. When most of us think about wasps, we think about the paper wasps that build their nests on our
Today we welcome a special guest author to #NatureZen. Dr. Ronné Adkins is the Memphis Field Office Regional Director of External Affairs for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. He has over fifteen years of experience in public service and the environmental field. Dr. Adkins earned
Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s beautiful weather by spending some quality time at Overton Park! For today’s #NatureZen, we’ll take a journey with two of the park’s newest residents. Words and photos by Melissa McMasters On July 14, I was taking a masked-up walk through the
Happy National Moth Week, everyone! This week we celebrate the beauty and life cycle of an organism with more than 150,000 species worldwide. Because most moths are nocturnal, there are a vast number of species that we may encounter only rarely. But there are plenty of
Today, we’re thrilled to have a guest edition of #NatureZen by Dr. Sinlan Poo, a Research Scientist at the Memphis Zoo. Dr. Poo is a behavioral ecologist who is broadly interested in parental care, predator-prey interactions, reproductive ecology, and reintroduction biology. Though her research is primarily focused on
We’ve got a quick update for you on the future of Rust Hall. The search committee will recommend to Mayor Strickland that the National Ornamental Metal Museum be the next tenant, expanding its programming into Rust Hall while converting its downtown location into an artist-in-residence
For this edition of #NatureZen, we’re traveling a bit beyond the borders of Overton Park. To find the delicate creatures we’re admiring today, we need access to water, especially rivers and streams. Choose a spot along the Wolf River Greenway, for example, and look down
In your recent outdoor wanderings, you may have come across one of spring’s great gifts: the baby bird! Many of our resident songbirds are busy raising their young right now, training them to fly and find food. A baby bird that has begun to develop
by Melissa McMasters, Conservancy Director of Communications “Everything’s connected.” This phrase is never more true than when we’re examining ecosystems, and how every organism depends on another for its survival. Trees and flowers need insects to carry their pollen to other plants in order to
