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Editor’s Note: The following are bonus photos from a profile of the Greanya and Byler gardens featured in the May 2022 issue of Michigan Gardener. To read the full story, pick up a copy of Michigan Gardener in stores or see it in our Digital Edition, which you can read for free at MichiganGardener.com.
photos by Lisa Steinkopf
As spring bulbs begin to emerge, gardeners often wish they had planted more bulbs last fall. Few “perennials” are this easy to plant, grow, and maintain. However, many bulbs do have shortcomings. Some are planted and immediately become squirrel food. Others bloom so late that gardeners have to wait a few extra weeks for the foliage to die back before annuals can be planted. And the largest concern is their failure to bloom for more than a few years in the garden. Tarda tulip may help you overcome some of these potential problems.
Every year, in late April to early May, each tarda tulip (Tulipa tarda) bulb produces 4 to 6, star-shaped flowers that are about 2 to 3 inches across. The yellow buds open almost flat, revealing bright yellow petals whose lower half is white. Unlike most of the showier hybrids of today, tarda tulip’s flower size and color lends itself to a more refined and subdued display.
Tarda tulip is one of several tulips that can be found in nature, especially if you happen to be walking around the rocky slopes of rural China. Therefore, it is referred to as a species tulip—it hasn’t been bred for bigger blooms or brighter colors. Like several other species tulips, tarda tulip is extremely hardy. Severe winters and hot summers rarely threaten its vigor. This is especially true if you can create well-drained soil that is amended with organic matter such as compost or shredded pine bark. Plant bulbs at a depth of 6 inches in full or partial sun for best results.
The other great feature of this species tulip is its ability to flower year after year after year. Many of the more popular tulip types such as parrots, doubles, single lates, etc., have exceptional flower colors and forms. These, however, rarely last for more than a few years in the garden, even with the best conditions. On the other hand, tarda tulip is a true perennial type and should last for many years with minimal or no effort.
Tarda tulip’s short, yellow and white flowers make excellent partners for slightly taller tulips. Try a rock garden tulip (Tulipa greigii) for a 10- to 12-inch background. Then use the durable blossoms of grape hyacinths as a contrasting blue, spike-shaped flower that grows to about the same six-inch height. Don’t forget spring-blooming perennial groundcovers such as creeping phlox or candytuft. These can be planted right over tarda tulip for a brilliant, double dose of color every spring.
As for the squirrels, I can offer some ideas. The most reliable deterrent is to plant your bulbs under a piece of chicken wire that is buried below the soil surface. It always is effective but can be a chore to install and is especially annoying when it gets in the way of other plantings. Repellents can also be applied to bulbs before planting. These eventually wash away, but usually succeed because bulbs are the most vulnerable for a few days after planting. The good news is that tarda tulip is one of the least expensive tulips available. So, an occasional loss to Mr. Squirrel isn’t as economically devastating as it would be with other, more costly bulbs.
In the fall, tarda tulip can be found at many garden centers alongside other species tulips. Try these true perennials in your toughest areas and take advantage of their durability and beauty. It’s likely that these little gems will outlast your other bulbs and may even spread to fill nearby open spaces. Just remember to watch out for the squirrels.
Botanical name: Tulipa tarda (TOO-lip-uh TAR-duh)
Plant type: Bulb
Plant size: 6 inches tall
Hardiness: Zone 4
Flower color: White tips & yellow centers
Flower size: 2-3 inches across, star-shaped
Bloom period: Late April to early May
Leaf color: Green
Leaf size: 5 inches long
Light: Full to part sun
Soil: Well-drained soil, amended with organic matter
Uses: Perennial border, rock garden
Companion plants: Grape hyacinths, medium height tulips (10-14 inch), spring-blooming perennial groundcovers, such as creeping phlox or candytuft.
Remarks: Species tulip; very hardy; longer-lived than the more common, hybridized tulips.
George Papadelis is the owner of Telly’s Greenhouse in Troy and Shelby Township, MI.
Washington Post:
This summer, a construction team is expected to begin transforming a 12-acre field at the U.S. National Arboretum into one of the most ambitious Chinese gardens ever built in the West.
By the time Chinese artisans finish their work some 30 months later, visitors will encounter a garden containing all the elements of a classical Chinese landscape: enticing moongate entrances, swooping and soaring roof lines, grand pavilions with carved wooden screens and groves of golden bamboo. The grounds will boast two dozen handcrafted pavilions, temples and other ornate structures around a large central lake.
Its backers undoubtedly hope that the National China Garden will become a Washington landmark and achieve for Sino-U.S. relations what the gift of the Tidal Basin’s cherry trees has done for Japanese-American links for more than a century. The Chinese government is so anxious to have the garden that it has agreed to foot the entire bill, which approaches $100 million.
This past winter was odd, weather-wise. That’s not surprising, since few seasons ever match all the averages. At winter’s end the standard greeting between two gardeners is “Hello! Weird winter, huh? What do you suppose all that (fill in weather feature here) will mean to the garden this year?”
Have fun soliciting and making predictions but treat it as what it is, a game. Use it to pass the time until spring arrives with the real answers. Don’t take any prediction too seriously, no matter the source.
That goes for the pictorial prognostications that accompany this story. Don’t fret over any of them, just consider them as the possibilities they are.
My goal here is to convince you that it’s not possible to make an accurate forecast of what effect a particular stretch of weather will have on a given garden. It’s far better, and more fun, to match plants and sites, then see what happens as millions of years of genetic development goes head to head with all the vagaries of the rest of the natural world.
If you want to explore this position, start by comparing garden forecasting with two disciplines that rely on prediction: meteorology and economics.
First, there’s meteorology, a science that even the most critical person admits has improved over the past 40 years in its ability to predict tomorrow’s weather. To make predictions, forecasters use precise data collected from thousands of weather stations across and above the world. These numbers are transmitted instantaneously to central reporting offices where all the factors that influence the speed, direction, temperature and humidity of air currents, plus the atmosphere’s current vital signs, are fed into sophisticated computers. There they churn as hundreds or thousands of equations whose answers are compared to known history and probability, then displayed as predicted future air pressure, wind speed, cloud development, etc.
This system for analyzing the atmosphere had its beginnings in prehistory when the first farmer or sailor squinted into the wind and tried to recall when he or she had seen a sky quite like that and what had followed in that sky’s wake. By 2,000 years ago, these forecasters had help from weather vanes and rain gauges, but it wasn’t until the mid-1600s that they understood the need to measure air pressure, humidity and temperature and invented the barometer, hygrometer and thermometer. Thus today’s computers have no more than 350 years of data to work with. For many New World areas the records cover less than 100 years.
With simple math (at least I’m told it’s simple!) one can look at the number of variables, the amount of historical data on hand, the possible combinations of variables and locations for which we desire weather forecasts and see that we just haven’t been at this game long enough to know all the possible answers.
Another place where accurate forecasts would be gold—literally—is the field of economics. It’s a science barely 300 years old and which only took on its current form about 70 years ago. It’s so new that we really don’t expect reliable predictions and accept widely varying interpretations of the same “leading indicators.” Economists are still debating how much influence each accepted variable has on overall economic growth and recession, and theories are still being advanced and tested that would change the variables themselves.
So there you have it, two areas where there is a pressing need for accurate forecasting. In one, we’ve strived for thousands of years yet we’re still only close in our predictions. In the other, although the search for reliable forecasts is fueled by the weight of all the world’s money and we have hair-splittingly accurate accounts of every conceivable factor for 70 years, experts still can’t agree that we’re even looking at the right numbers.
The basic natural factors that affect an individual plant’s performance are at least as complex as those that influence the weather. And because people are the ones who plant, prod and rate the plants whose futures we’d like to predict, human actions have to be taken into account, too.
Just to start building a history on which garden predictions might someday be based, we would need complete meteorological records for the garden area plus accurate daily measurements and seasonal averages of soil density, temperature, moisture levels, available nutrients and resident pathogens. Also important would be an objective evaluation of the relationship—beneficial or antagonistic—between each pair of plants so we could weight a plant’s possible response to adverse conditions for whether it was being assisted or debilitated by its neighbors. Of course we’d need reports on all human, animal or insect activity in the vicinity and detailed descriptions of the plants themselves, including their ages and past “medical” history.
Meteorologists turn to the National Weather Service for reports. Economists tap the National Bureau of Economic Research for essential statistics. Pressing need and the importance of money fuel these data-gathering efforts. There’s no big pay-off in collecting garden stats. So don’t hold your breath waiting for the Garden Prognostication Agency to appear.
Do keep doing your best to match each plant you grow to a site that provides the conditions it would have had in its native setting. Embedded in every well-sited plant is the ability to survive just about everything that Nature can throw at it. Grow it in the right amount of light and in the type of soil that species evolved to exploit. Water it as if you are the gentlest rains of that plant’s homeland. That plant will not only light up your life in a “normal” year but provide you with something to crow about in the bad times.
Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.
While catching up on some recent stories, this one caught our eye:
Gardens on the moon. It sounds like a particularly whimsical children’s book. But if NASA has its way, it might become more than a fantasy story. The space agency revealed plans this past week to grow a series of plants on the moon: basil, turnips and a little white flowered planet called Arabidopsis.
WSJ:
People hoping that the approach of autumn will mean fewer allergies, may want to prepare for some sneezing with their leaf-raking.
For many people, allergic reactions go into overdrive late summer and into fall because pollen counts soar. Mold counts rise, too, thanks largely to wet leaves sitting on the ground, a terrific breeding situation for mold spores.
While many popular garden plants are insect-pollinated—often with showy flowers that attract pollinators, and bearing heavier, stickier pollen grains—it is the wind-pollinated plants that cause the most problems for allergy sufferers, says Susan Littlefield, horticulturist for the National Gardening Association.
To read the full profile on Judy and Larry Rowe, pick up a copy of the June, 2013 issue of Michigan Gardener in stores or find it in our digital edition.
Photos by Sandie Parrott
By Janet Macunovich / photos by Steven Nikkila
As a garden grows, so grows the gardener.
I spent a summer in England, ostensibly as nanny to a four year old niece. There, the brothers Cameron changed my life. These men—I never knew their first names, addressing both as “Mr. Cameron”—were caretakers of a church in Shenley Church End, Buckinghamshire. A Cameron had been the church caretaker, lived in that home, and tended the walled cottage garden since the late 1600’s.
My first visit was in early June when the elder Cameron found me studying headstones in the church graveyard. He asked me into the garden for tea. I invited myself back to talk flowers, and returned throughout the summer to run wheelbarrow and dig for the two, then 70 and 80 years old.
Back home in Michigan that fall, I dug over the garden I’d left behind and planned to change it from rows of vegetables and annuals to perennials. It went fallow into the winter, insulated under a thick layer of leaves, ready for a grand metamorphosis. I spent that winter buried in catalogues, searching out the seeds of plants I’d coveted through the summer, unaware of how much I myself was changing.
Now, more than a quarter century has passed and with it the Camerons’ garden and even Shenley Church End—swallowed in a conglomerate community called Milton Keynes. The church is closed, lost in a hard-to-find siding off the new traffic flow. Looking into the walled yard attached to the deserted caretaker’s house, you see only the field grass and weeds that come to abandoned ground everywhere.
Yet the inspiration I took from that delightful garden still grows.
Initially, I mistook its nature.
I worked happily in my garden for years, thinking to reproduce the plants, the sitting areas, the gracefully trained vines of the Camerons’ retreat. I felt some regret as my palate expanded to include species that were probably never available to the Camerons—it seemed I would leave their garden behind. After several seasons more, I was surprised to see that the similarities between what had developed here in Waterford and what had been there in Buckinghamshire were still greater than the differences. I understood then that my real goal had been and still was to recreate the feeling of that English garden, not a replica of its beds.
More recently, I doubted the value of pursuing that feeling. When I began gardening on others’ properties as much or more as I gardened on my own, the thrill of the new garden claimed me. Working in my own beds was not as much fun as creating a garden from non-garden. Stripping sod, outlining beds on a clean slate, watching a design move from paper to reality produced a creative high that was tough to find except in a new garden. To make anything truly new in an established garden, so much energy had to be expended in preparation, just to clear away existing plants and memories!
Established gardens began to seem more trouble than they were worth in other ways. Plants overgrew their bounds, sometimes in ugly or destructive ways only partially remedied with tedious pruning and awkward restraints. Weeds that sneaked in and became entrenched could sometimes be eradicated only through wholesale slaughter of, or painstaking lifting and cleaning of desirable plants. Pests sometimes claimed the upper hand, particularly as conditions changed around older plants. Looking at sections of garden left thin and raw for these and other reasons, I began to think it would be better to tear everything out and start new every five or six years, or move to a new gardening site entirely.
Today, I’m back on the Camerons’ track. I have identified the seed which germinated in me back then as love of Hortus venerablus—the old garden. Even with its limitations, its advantages are overwhelming. It’s now inextricably rooted in my heart.
To name just a few advantages, beyond the obvious ones of mature hedges and trees that cast shade…
In a garden tended over many years to discourage weeds, the seed bank in the soil shifts. Where it may once have had a high proportion of crabgrass seed—a species which can survive 20 years in the soil, waiting its chance to rise to the surface and sprout—it may eventually contain more daisy and coreopsis than dandelion, more globe thistle and coneflower than chickweed. Bare the soil in a new garden and stand ready to hoe lamb’s quarters, dock, pigweed and spurge. Pull the mulch back from a bit of old bed and prepare to thin volunteer candytuft, pimpernel, campion and cranesbill. Weeding the cracks between new paving stones is a chore. Weeding the same spaces in an older garden, the tedium is broken by discovery and decisions to leave that patch of sweet alyssum, step over that seedling sedum, and allow that pesky Perilla to stay and shade out any other comers.
Only over time do natural organisms of all sizes take hold and reach a balance with each other. Fungal and bacterial diseases seem to move in first, but if the gardener keeps a level head and avoids trying to make the environment antagonistic to all such, a far greater number of benign and helpful microorganisms soon take hold. Some of these decompose organic matter, replacing store-bought fertilizer. Others infect and kill pests. Some are known to muscle into spaces each spring before their disease-causing relatives can reach them, creating a no-room-in-the-inn squeeze play that suppresses the proliferation of the baddies.
Worms, insect-eating insects, amphibians, birds and small mammals move in as the organic matter and smaller organisms they feed on become plentiful enough to support families. No wonder my long-ago trial with a hummingbird feeder failed! We should try again, now that there is so much better habitat, more water, more insects, an absence of bad-tasting pesticides and a wealth of alternative food sources. But then, why bother? The hummingbirds are here!
A client, relatively new to gardening, once wanted me to transplant a particular plant from my garden to hers, and took offense when I declined the work. She didn’t understand my explanation that the plant’s above ground appearance was a direct reflection of an extensive, old root system and an equally extensive network of life in the soil. Simple refusal would have been my best route because the to-your-bones understanding of that situation usually comes only with experience and years. She would have to learn for herself that no amount of skill with a spade can succeed in a lasting transfer of the essence of old.
The thrill of the new still exhilarates me—I count myself fortunate to be able to feel it in large doses in clients’ and friends’ yards. Yet as an admirer of age, I’m also happier in my older beds, as delighted watching things grow as I am at their maturity. The “routines” of maintenance are more enjoyable and the unrealistic expectation that things will ever be and stay “done” crops up less. I may even be learning to coach others in cultivating an appreciation of both aspects of gardening.
Oh, to sip tea with the Camerons today, and talk to them of these things. How we might laugh over what I said and did then as I plotted to transplant Hortus venerablus!
Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.
Continued from page 36 of the April 2013 issue.
Photos by Sandie Parrott
by Janet Macunovich / photos by Steven Nikkila
“Whose garden is it?” asks the children’s book by that name. Everyone and everything, from the gardener to the rain and the resident rabbit, replies, “It’s mine!”
How true, that so many have claims on a garden. In the case of my own garden and some I tend, the gardener doesn’t even list his or her own claim first, but would answer that question, “It’s theirs and I’m glad. I wished for and worked to attract the birds, the rabbits, the groundhog, the fox, the butterflies and all the rest. With every change, I think about them and how to keep them.”
Life requires all three. If you spring for one—food, for instance—you might nab some visitors if the creatures you’re luring are already nearby because your yard or another property in your vicinity is providing them water and shelter. On the other hand, hang out a hummingbird feeder in a large new development devoid of big trees and though that lure sparkles red in the sun and you change it religiously to keep the syrup from spoiling, you may never see a hummer. The habitat a ruby-throated hummingbird looks for is wooded and though it may fly a mile to feed it wants to nest where it’s woodsy.
So make a list of the wildlife you’d like to see, learn the particulars of their basic recipe, check what’s on hand and what’s missing in your neighborhood that they need, and add what it takes. Go wild!
Food is probably the easiest prescription to fill. Scatter some seed on the ground and you’re likely to get a few sparrows, whose presence may cue birds of other types to come see “what’s up.”
That offering is supplemental food. Make sure your yard also offers natural food if you want the most diversity, all year, without having to break the bank to keep all those hungry beaks and bellies filled. What Nature provides often can’t be duplicated at a feeder: A well-rounded, nutritionally balanced diet.
When you look around your neighborhood to see what it has to offer the wildlife on your invitation list, look for plants that produce seeds and berries. Notice or look up what time of year each crop becomes available.
If you find that every berry bush and seed plant around ripens in late spring or early fall, you might be able to fill the summer and winter gaps with dogwoods for late summer berries, members of the sunflower family that offer up seed at the end of July, or viburnum and hawthorn that carry fruit into winter. You might boost your whole neighborhood’s rating to that of a five-star wildlife resort and at the same time become the best seat in the house because the table will be loaded only in your yard at certain times.
One critical menu item you might overlook is bugs. On the wing, in the ground, as eggs and larvae, they’re lunch to almost everything bigger. Insects are probably even more important to birds than berries and seeds, because they’re a better source of protein. Even birds that eat more fruit than anything else at most times of year will switch to bug collection when they’re raising young. It’s just plain better fuel for getting a nestling up to speed and out on is own.
As you assess your surroundings for wildlife potential, keep an eye open for pesticide use that you might be able to influence, and think hard about your own use of insecticides. This isn’t to say that some bug-killing isn’t warranted, only that the see-bug-kill-bug approach is one that has to be moderated if you’d like to enjoy the company of organisms that are higher on the food chain.
As well as protecting bugs so they’ll be there on the menu for other animals, many people cater to certain insects on a par with songbirds. They do, and you can, provide the plants that caterpillars eat, introduce and nurture fascinating predators such as preying mantises and lightning bugs, and design the landscape so it offers one after another of the flowers that serve nectar-sipping bees and butterflies.
Bees and butterflies may be able to live for days on nectar alone but for most wildlife no meal is complete without a sip of water. Wild animals know where to find it in natural bodies of water, puddles, and tree cavities and crotches that collect rainwater. To tiny critters such as butterflies and hummingbirds, even a dewy leaf is a beverage bar.
Yet drought happens. Then, the water we spill into a birdbath, the sprinkler we leave running and a garden pond or fountain can be lifesavers. Looking for entertainment on a dry summer day? Set up a sprinkler so that it hits shrubbery as well as a lawn or garden, and watch the birds check in to perches high and low for a drink and a wash. Position your chair so you can see both the spot being watered and any place downhill where runoff accumulates, since some species prefer to shower, others to bathe.
Running and dripping water is such a lure that even a simple leaky bucket can call birds from a quarter mile. Try it. Put a very small hole in an expendable bucket and perch it on a bench or table so it drips onto a flat stone. Or leave a hose barely dripping over that same rock. Some member of your wild community will find it, others will notice, and soon a line will form!
You may not realize how important your garden pond is until you make a point of watching it all day or through the night. Toads gather there to mate, frogs take up residence, dragonflies drop their eggs in, and squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, and even deer stop in to sip.
What we saw in our own ponds over the years prompted us to design the one we have now with creature comfort in mind. We made it deep enough that at least some fish would always escape a heron’s fishing spree. We put a layer of sand at its bottom so frogs could dig in and remain at the bottom through winter. At one edge we created a beach—a sloping exit point where birds, snakes or shrews that fall in might be able to climb back out. Within the lined excavation we included a bog, where a depression in the sand can be a butterfly puddling point. We do minimal cleanup in spring to preserve the dragonflies that spend winter there as mosquito-eating larvae.
Whether you set out a simple water bowl for the ducks who forage at the foot of your feeder, fill an old dishpan with sand plus just enough water to form a shallow puddle on top for the butterflies, or go whole hog on a birdbath with fountain, keep two words in mind: clean and safe. Change the water often so mosquitoes can’t breed there, and keep it shallow so the smallest of your visitors can wade without drowning.
Birdhouses and nesting boxes are the first things most people list when asked what “shelter” means in relation to wildlife. Others include the dog hair, yarn and other building materials they set out to be taken by nest builders. Some recognize that they’re providing shelter when they ignore standard pruning practice to leave cluttered crotches and decayed “snags” on trees to serve as nest bases and natural nesting cavities. All of these places and things associated with raising young are shelter but still only one part of a bigger picture.
Safe passage is part of shelter. It encompasses hedge rows that are travel lanes for critters which might otherwise draw the attention of a hawk or owl. Brush piles fall into this category since they can admit wee beasties while keeping out the larger animals that hunt them. Clumps of herbaceous perennial stems left standing over winter count, too, as they may harbor developing caterpillars and ladybugs, or screen the entrance to anything from a chipmunk hole to a fox’s den.
Warming stations are shelter, too. The southeast face of a hedge is the warm spot many creatures seek after a cold night. Even better are shrubs along the east or south side of a building, where the sun warms one side of the plants while the other holds heat that escapes from windows and chinks in the wall. Likewise, the sunny side of a rock pile is a magnet for cold-blooded reptiles. Before you shudder and dismantle your rock wall, consider that it’s also the place where cold-blooded butterflies and dragonflies can warm themselves.
Shelter is also the proverbial port in a storm. When the weather turns ugly, thickets, evergreen trees and dense shrubs can quickly become as crowded as a park pavilion when thunder and lightning interrupt a 4th of July celebration. Trees on the lee side of a slope might serve as a roost for hundreds of birds when strong winds blow during migration time. Even the sheltered side of an ornamental grass becomes a busy spot when winter winds blow.
So set your stage to both invite wildlife and allow you to watch from a prime seat. Pick plants to feed and house those birds, bats, bufos, bugs or bunnies. Cluster them to block the wind and slow a predator. Place the densest groups to the north and west of where you sit so you’ll have a clear view of the troupe that assembles there.
Then, make yourself comfortable and keep binoculars close by. A constantly changing cast of characters will pass though that space, improvising as they do. They may put wear and tear on the set you built, but rein in your urge to tidy it too much. Add more of what you see most used. Intervene if you must but allow some rowdiness because sometimes that’s what brings out the most impressive performances. While other people are filling their photo albums with beautiful still lifes, you’ll be weaving the wild into your life.
Plant early-, mid-season and late-ripening species. Put them where they’ll prosper. Don’t deadhead. Add more of whatever appeals most to “your” birds.
Seed that ripens in early summer:
• Pot marigold (Calendula)
• Tickseed (Coreopsis)
Seed that ripens mid- to late summer:
• Bachelor button
• Bellflower (Campanula)
• Bull thistle
• Chicory
• Cosmos
• Love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus)
• Marigold
• Portulaca
Seed that ripens in fall and remains available into winter:
• Aster
• Coneflower
• Fountain grass
• Phlox
• Sunflower (annual and perennial species)
• Switchgrass
When it’s hungry, almost any bird will eat an oil-rich seed such as thistle or sunflower. However, some, such as mourning doves, cardinals, sparrows, house finches and goldfinches, prefer seed and eat more of it than anything else.
Other birds, including orioles, cedar waxwings, robins, thrashers and woodpeckers, are not seen so often at feeders because their diets consist primarily of fruit or insects. To attract fruit and insect eaters, put out fruit and suet cakes.
Both hummingbirds and butterflies sip nectar and may vie for any of the flowers on this list, but most butterflies must perch to feed while hummingbirds can hover.
Nectar drinkers need masses of flowers. A hummingbird may visit 1,000 blooms per day to obtain enough nectar—typically, 1/2 its own body weight in nectar, plus insects and water. So to do the best for hummingbirds and butterflies, stick with what grows well in your garden, and grow a lot of it.
Hummingbirds
Ajuga
Azalea/rhododendron
Bleeding heart
Canna
Catmint
Columbine
Coral bells
Dahlia
Daylily
Delphinium
Four o’clock
Foxglove
Fuchsia
Geranium
Gladiola
Hibiscus
Honeysuckle
Impatiens
Iris
Larkspur
Cleome
Lobelia
Morning glory
Nicotiana
Petunia
Quince
Rose of Sharon
Salvia
Snapdragon
Trumpet vine
Virginia bluebells
Weigela
Wisteria
Zinnia
Butterflies
Rock cress/Arabis
Aster
Bull thistle
Candytuft
Celosia
Coneflowers
Gaillardia
Joe pye weed
Lavender
Milkweeds/Asclepias
Pincushion flower
Plumbago
Sedum
Verbena
Both
Beauty bush
Bee balm/Monarda
Butterfly bush
Dianthus
Elderberry
Lantana
Lilac
Phlox
The black-capped chickadee we love as a cheery presence at the thistle seed feeder actually prefers to eat insects. Even when provided with plentiful seed, it forages in the garden where it eats large numbers of bugs and their eggs. It eats eggs of moths, aphids, katydids and spiders in winter. During the growing season it’s a very good hunter of moths, caterpillars, spiders, weevils, beetles, flies, wasps, bugs, aphids, leafhoppers and treehoppers.
About those buzzy little wrens who scold at you when you garden too close to their home: Give way! On average, a pair of wrens delivers 500 insects per day to their brood.
Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.