Are you a New England gardener seeking a good gardening book in which to lose yourself during cold winter months? Look no further than Ellen Sousa's book The Green Garden: A New England Guide to Planning, Planting & Maintaining the Eco-Friendly Habitat Garden.
Feeling engulfed by an ever growing pile of fallen leaves? Leaf season can be overwhelming. Within hours after they are finally raked, blown, swept, sucked-up or otherwise removed from lawns, driveways, walkways, decks, patios and gardens, they return, begging for more raking, blowing, and sweeping. Children love playing in mounds of leaves. Most adults curse the perennial piles, but we shouldn't.
It's time for me to look at my deer-munched plantings with a glass-half-full attitude. Deer, in large numbers, are here to stay unless my little section of south-central Connecticut is suddenly cohabitated by a throng of hungry mountain lions … but that would bring another set of issues. Enough sniveling over all the greenery I've planted that deer now see as dinner (That's a deer, granddaughter deer. and Do deer tweet?). Time to focus on what deer haven't eaten … yet.
White-tailed deer are beautiful creatures but there are simply too many trying to survive in Connecticut woodlands. My south-central Connecticut town is listed in Connecticut hunting zone 12 which includes shoreline towns from Milford to Stonington and Connecticut River towns of Lyme and East Haddam. Zone 12, along with zone 11 towns in southwestern Connecticut, has extended white-tail deer hunting seasons because of high deer density – as many as 60 to 70 deer per square mile in studied areas of these zones. Considering that deer eat 5 to 10 pounds of plant material per day, deer density exceeding 20 per square mile is enough to significantly alter forest undergrowth.
I suspect the personal gardens of some garden designers are always well-balanced, well-planted, well-weeded, and picture perfect. I'm not in this group. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with some of the planting designs I've implemented around my house.
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