Birds in the Garden: Creating a Haven for Colorful Birds in Your Yard

Birds bring many benefits to our lives. They fill our gardens with song, bring a spark of color and interest to our winter landscapes, and also eat many garden pests. Attracting birds to your landscape is fun. Their needs are easy to meet and just about everyone can achieve success by providing them with three basics things: shelter, water, and food.

If you have evergreen trees or shrubs, or maybe a tall canopy of shade trees, then you have the element of shelter. Birds need protection during feeding and bathing from cats and other predators. Try to position feeders and birdbaths close enough to natural shelter so that birds can perch safely between trips to the feeder, but yet far enough away so that they don’t make an easy target for the neighbor’s cat.

Water can be the most alluring aspect of your landscape. The sound of splashing water is relaxing and will also attract colorful birds. Birdbaths and small fountains are great accents for your yard and will provide your new guests with one of their most basic requirements. A shallow water source is all they need.

Consider placing your bird feeder adjacent to your water source. Once you have attracted birds to your yard, you don’t want to play hide-and-seek with the food source. Feeders can be hung from tree limbs, mounted on a freestanding pole, or even hung from the shepherd’s hook that held a hanging basket in spring. To stock your feeders, use birdseed mixes high in sunflower seed to attract the greatest variety of birds. Cardinals love black oil and striped sunflower as well as safflower seed. Suet cakes are great for woodpeckers, chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches.

Another helpful tip is to scatter some seed on the ground around your feeder. This will attract mourning doves and other ground feeders. It’s easy to create a safe haven for birds in your yard. The enjoyment they bring will last a lifetime. Put out your feeder today!

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Reviving Your Turf

As your lawn endures the trials of job this summer – drought, pestilence and disease – you must hold to the hope that there is a lush, green turf on the other side of this summer. Has your spring turf been reduced to an arid, brown toasty color? If not, you might want to submit your water bills for federal disaster relief. Dry, scorching heat is the perfect scenario for crabgrass to flourish and bluegrass to perish. What’s needed, of course, is a good, deep penetrating rain.

The large Japanese beetle population will mean a heavier than normal population of grubs. Knowledge is of course your best defense. Here are a couple of suggestion for coaxing your sod through the trials of summer…

Feeding: Your lawn’s nitrogen needs are at their highest in late summer. Avoid fertilizing when temps are about 85 degrees. Supplement this late summer feed (high in nitrogen) with a fall fertilizer that will concentrate on developing the root system. This will build a turf more resistant to drought and pest damage. This might be your most beneficial feeding. You can supply a fall food right into November in most areas.

Pest Control: In late summer and early fall the grub cycle begins as the larvae pupate into the common white lawn grub. At this stage of their development, these grubs are the most vulnerable. Treat infested areas with milky spore, an organic alternative to harsh chemicals. For more information visit the NOFA website.

Watering: A good rule of thumb is to water in the early morning hours. Try to provide at least 1 to 1.5 inches of water through rainfall or irrigation. A deep watering once a week is more beneficial than a series of shallow watering.

Seeding: To repair damage caused by drought, pests and disease, plan on a fall seeding program. Match the grass seed varieties to the conditions. For example, if you have a rocky, sandy soil that doesn’t hold moisture well, use a drought resistant lawn mixture featuring turf-type tall fescues (TTTF). Unlike ryegrass that spread by shallow rhizomes, TTTF have long individual tap roots. They are tough, durable and make a long wearing attractive turf. Heavy clay soils might do better with a bluegrass and ryegrass mixture. Fall is an optimum time for seeding. The warm weather speeds germination while the autumn night temps start to drop. Remember to keep the seed moist until established. That might require 2-3 mistings during our “Indian Summers”. The attention you pay to your lawn now will pay big dividends in the fall, the following spring and for years to come.

Painting With Plants

Much like an artist uses oils, the gardener uses plants to paint strokes of color across the landscape. Part of the art and beauty of gardening lies in the ability to combine nature’s hues in a way that delights the eye and engages the viewer. Some instinctively know which colors work well together and the exact shade to use to perk up a drab border. For others, the process is more hit or miss, moving plants around to find the right combinations. Whether your tastes run to brilliant reds and yellows or restful blues and greens, the secret to creating the look and feel you want in the garden is often simply a matter of understanding the effects of different color combinations.

Analogous Colors

Analogous colors are those that are closely related on the color wheel. Yellows, oranges, and red-oranges (or blues and violets) used together create a feeling of harmony. Combining analogous colors is perhaps the most popular color scheme used in gardening.

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are colors that are opposite on the color wheel, such as violet and yellow, blue and orange, and red and green. These colors offer the greatest contrast, so the effect can be bold and dramatic, even vibrating. Be careful not to mix small amounts of complementary colors together, however, as from a distance the colors will tend to blend, appearing gray. Larger areas of one color positioned against an area of its complement will work to create an exciting contrast.

Triadic Colors

Triadic colors are groups of three colors that are spaced equidistant from one another on the color wheel. Using areas of primary colors, such as red, blue, and yellow, together in your garden can create a dramatic effect. As with complementary colors, too many small patches of varying color can create a gray or neutral tone from a distance. Plant larger areas of color to benefit from this electric contrast.

Monochromatic Colors

A single color used throughout the garden can create a wonderful feeling of unity. To keep this area from becoming too monotonous, use plants of varying textures and varying degrees of value (lights and darks). An all-white garden, featuring silvery-greens along with a variety of white blossoms, will impart a feeling of purity and light. You can add hints of pale blue for a cool, quiet mood, or warm things up with a splash of yellow.

Cool colors, such as blues, violets, and pinks, can create a quiet, calming effect, while warm colors, such as bright yellows, oranges, and reds, tend to make a bold and dramatic statement. Placing plants with cool colors, which recede from the eye, behind those with warm colors, which advance, creates the illusion of depth in a small space.

Perhaps the best rule to follow in creating a color statement in your garden is to experiment. Try unusual combinations of color together to see for yourself what works for you in your space. Move plants around…as a color that isn’t quite working in one area may look great in another.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

Although gardeners often dream of sun-splashed borders filled with stately perennials, many are discovering that their daisies, daylilies, and daffodils are working overtime, bringing the garden to light…at night! Welcome to the world of the garden after dark.

With busy families finding fewer daylight hours to enjoy their gardens, it makes perfect sense to create a moonlight retreat in which family and friends can gather after hours. Spending balmy evenings out-of-doors is a wonderful luxury after the chill of winter…and during the scorching days of summer, the relative cool of the nighttime garden will come as a welcome respite. For the romantic at heart, few things are more enchanting than a midnight stroll through flowers kissed by moonlight.

How do you begin to create such a paradise? The secret is to select white and pale-colored plants that shimmer in the night. You’ll find that many of your favorite flowers, which you thought only bloomed in blue or hot pink, have been hybridized for white color or a very pale interpretation of their darker counterparts. Annuals like petunias, impatiens, and snapdragons all have white cousins, along with perennials, such as echinacea (coneflower) and campanula. You may also be surprised to learn at what time of day many flowers open. While some, like daylilies, as the name suggests, actually close at nightfall, others, such as evening primrose and moonflower, with its lemony scent, come alive right along with the peepers and crickets.

Just like any other garden, the moonlit garden should be filled with plants of different heights and habits, shapes and textures. Plants with variegated or white-edged foliage like euonymus, ivy, and hosta, add contrast to the garden and will sparkle in the dim light just like the flowers. Shrubs like spirea provide a backdrop for lower-growing plants like cosmos and artemisia, while a well-placed trellis or fence can lend support to lacy curtains of clematis and passionflower. A bench beneath an arbor brimming with white wisteria and climbing roses or a garden swing flanked by fragrant lilac or mock orange is an intoxicating spot to while away an evening. You’ll find that the strong fragrance will not only attract hopeless romantics, but also the “butterflies of the night,” moths, which will flit and flutter throughout the moonlit garden feeding on sweet nectar. Special touches complete the scene: A serpentine path lined with phlox, baby’s breath, and lilies, will invite a leisurely stroll, and a rustic lantern will allow you to enjoy your garden even on those nights when the moon is hidden by clouds.

A warm summer’s night, a trickle of water from a nearby fountain, and some soothing music from a speaker hidden beneath a shrub–the stage is set for spending a relaxing evening with friends and family in the magical land of the midnight garden.

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