joene's garden » A Garden of Possibilities

Bartlett Arboretum – I love trees

joenesgarden — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Below read a guest post from Debbie at A Garden of Possibilities. She shares her life-long love affair with trees and how she feeds this love with visits at Bartlett Arboretum, one of Connecticut's great public gardens. Debbie provided the photos for her tale …

I love trees. I always have, they fascinate me. My love affair with trees started years (and years) ago, when I was growing up in upstate New York. We lived across the street from a golf course and there were big white pines lining that section course for privacy and to stop any errant balls from landing in our front yard. Along with my two best friends, Jeanne and Wendy, I used to climb into those pine trees and hang out for hours. We'd laugh and gossip, discuss boys, homework and read books our parents specifically told us were off-limits.

In the fall, if we weren't hanging out in the pines trees, we could be found a few streets over collecting chestnuts from a tree that was swollen with them every autumn. We'd walk by the tree on our way home from school everyday just to see if it was releasing its bounty yet. Once it was, every kid in the neighborhood knew. We'd collect chestnuts by the bag full. We'd stomp on the prickly burrs and rub the nuts until they were shiny and glossy. Then we'd make jewelry out of them, play games with them or simply try and kick one all the way home. Ah, childhood memories…

OK, I haven't climbed a tree in I don't know how long, but I still get excited when I hold a chestnut burr in my hand. And I still find trees magical. Luckily, I'm able to indulge my love of trees right in my own backyard, so to speak. Located just a few miles from my home is the Bartlett Arboretum, a 91-acre living museum of trees and other plants. The Bartlett is the former home and laboratory of Dr. Francis Bartlett, famed dendrologist (a scientist who studies trees and shrubs) and founder of the FA Bartlett Expert Tree Company. At one time, the state owned the arboretum but now it's owed by the city of Stamford.

The Bartlett is probably one of the best examples of an undisturbed, native Connecticut landscapes you'll find in this area. It offers a variety of natural habitats, including woodlands, a red maple wetland, swamps, bogs and even a wildflower meadow. There are also 5 acres of trails and numerous stroll paths for exploring the grounds.

As you might expect, the Bartlett is home to an amazing collection of trees. In fact, it houses about 20 trees that have been given Champion or Notable status by the Notable Trees Project. If you live in Connecticut, you can find the notable trees in your town by clicking here.

Some of my favorite trees at the Bartlett are the redbud (Cercis canadensis – top photo) you walk under to get into the main lawn, the stewartias (Stewartia psuedocamellia) with their smooth, muscular, camouflage bark and the fern-leaved beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Asplenifolia') with its massive trunk and roots, to name a few.

Even if you're not into trees, the Bartlett Arboretum has something to entice you. If you have young children in your life, they will absolutely love the boardwalk through the red maple wetlands and the pond that's home to a plethora of toads and frogs.

And just a quick walk through the woods brings you to the wildflower meadow. There's a collection of over 300 different rhododendrons, all hardy to southwestern Connecticut. And seasonal displays of flowers and rare plants not normally planted in the Northeast.

The Bartlett also offers many educational opportunities for adults and children and hosts 'Summer Music Sundays' with classical in the morning and pops in the evening. It is the site of a seasonal plant clinic staffed by master gardeners who will help diagnosis plant problems. I've been to the plant clinic a few times and the staff is always helpful and very knowledgeable. So the next time you're looking for a neat place to visit to get a sense of the real Connecticut, remember the Bartlett Arboretum. You may not love trees when you arrive, but I bet you will by the time you leave.

The Bartlett Arboretum is located in Stamford, CT and is open every day from 9:00 – dusk. Admission is free on Wednesdays.

Categories: Garden Blogs, Sites to see.
Tags: A Garden of Possibilities, Bartlett Arboretum, Gardens in Connecticut, I love trees.

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The buzz on bees

joenesgarden — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:44:53 +0000

If you are not one who swats and retreats at the first sign of a bee buzz-by, I bet you know someone who does. Friend, fellow blogger, and landscape designer Debbie, at A Garden of Possibilities, wrote a fantastic post on bees as part of the Garden Designers Roundtable group she is part of.

I have nothing to add regarding bees – Debbie pretty much covers it all – but I will expand on the value of observation. I've been stung three times this season – all by wasps, not honey bees, and all because I wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings. Both times I disturbed an existing, but hidden, nest. Had I followed my old EMT training to survey the scene before entering, I likely would have noticed flight patterns and been able to prevent getting stung.

Surveying simply requires standing back and watching for flight patterns to and from a specific area before you begin any digging, weeding, or other disturbing-to-stinging-insects activity. Wasps like to nest in multiple unexpected locations. I've found them behind shutters, inside storage boxes, in hollow fences, at the top of wooden tuteurs, in trees, inside a retractable garden hose reel, and under the roof peaks of houses. Yellow jackets, which are actually another form of wasp, commonly nest in the ground. No matter the stinging insect, observation may be the best sting-avoidance step. Bees, wasps, etc. do not seek to sting people, but do so because they feel threatened. When it's dry, as is has been in Connecticut, I've found bees/wasps to be more protective of the flowers or berries they get moisture from. To minimize the risk of stings, I try to deadhead flowers or harvest berries in early morning or late day when stingers are less active.

For example, it's not a good idea to reach in bare-handed to pick raspberries under control of what I believe is a yellow jacket as shown here. I love raspberries, but so do they, so I opted to leave the raspberries alone until a time when yellow jackets are less active. But the bumble bee at right was perfectly happy to pose for its photo as long as I did not disturb it. When you take time to observe you'll notice that bumble bees like to rest on flowers overnight – I like to think they are intoxicated by the nectar.

For more info, and photos, of bees, wasps, etc. visit this University of Minnesota Extension page and this University of Connecticut IPM page … and make sure to visit Debbie's bee post – it's worth the read.

Categories: Creatures, Garden Blogs, Gardening, General.
Tags: A Garden of Possibilities, bees, Garden Designers Roundtable, gardening in Connecticut, wasps.

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Make a difference. Plant natives.

joenesgarden — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:07:23 +0000

Garden as if life depended on it! Doug Tallamy wrote these words in my copy of his book, Bringing Nature Home. No, I'm not a special friend or acquaintance, he wrote similar, if not identical words inside all the books he signed that day. On the other hand, though, I am special. I'm a gardener with extraordinary power … I can choose to plant whatever I want. You are also extraordinary, as you have exactly the same power as I. And if we, as gardeners, do just a little of what Tallamy suggests – increase the number of native plants growing in each of our gardens– we, individually and together, may be able to make a significant difference in the nature of our future.

Professor Tallamy chairs the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware in Newark. There he teaches insect taxonomy and ecology courses and researches how insects and plants interact. You can delve into his research simply by searching his name in Google Scholar. You'll see studies like Squash beetle feeding behavior in the journal Ecology, or Effects of non-native plants on the native insect community of Delaware in Biological Invasions … you get the picture, he's an insect junkie. But he's still able to write compelling, and very readable non-scientific explanations of the side-by-side evolution of local insects and local plants that enables them to support not only each other but the many birds and other creatures farther up the food chain … and how non-native plants are simply not as palatable or user-friendly, so to speak, to local insects … and when faced with fewer or no native food, insects either vastly decline or disappear … and when this happens local birds have fewer insects and caterpillars to feed their little bird babies … and weaker or fewer bird babies means fewer birds to feed other creatures farther up the food chain. Ok, any grammar or English teacher reading this is probably cringing at my run-on sentence, but I think I've made my, or more correctly Tallamy's point. Fewer natives = fewer bugs = fewer birds = less food for all.

Time and again Tallamy has found substantially more insect biomass (bird food) surviving on native shrubs, trees, and plants as opposed to alien greenery growing in the same area. One of his students, Meg Ballard, as her master's thesis, conducted a two-year comparison of insect biomass (bird food) found on six herbaceous natives – eastern black nightshade, black-eyed Susan, devil's beggarticks, ragweed, horseweed, and goldenrod – and six herbaceous aliens – lambsquarters, cocklebur, velvetleaf, jimsonweed, pigweed, and cosmos. Compared with aliens, the natives produced nearly 6-times more generalist insect herbivore biomass – that's science-speak for insects that eat just about any plant (generalists) rather than specialize on specific plants and therefore provide a good amount of bird food. This comparison produced no evidence that generalists prefer alien plants, Tallamy writes, or that alien plants produce as much insect biomass (bird food) as native plants.

Some of you are likely thinking, 'You want me to plant plants that attract more bugs?' The short answer is yes. More native plants = more native bugs = more bird food. An example is black-eyed Susans. They grow with virtually no work, offer color throughout mid to late summer, and provide food for local birds.

Tallamy's arguments for planting natives focuses more on trees. Consider oaks (Quercus), the mightiest when it comes to supporting Lepidoptera species (moths and butterflies). Oaks support 534, followed by willows (Salix) and cherry or plums (Prunus) at 456 each, birch (Betula) at 413, poplars/cottonwoods (Populus) at 368, and crabapples (Malus) at 311. Whereas beech (Fagus) support just 126. (Get the book and read the list on page 147.)

Bringing Nature Home includes color photos of native trees, native perennials, and native insects, as well as lists of natives for all regions of the continental U.S. – sorry Alaska, Hawaii, and other island locales - and this alone makes it a valuable reference. It also argues persuasively that gardeners move away from planting only for aesthetics and toward planting more to achieve a balanced food web. Tallamy even cites the success he and his wife have had in converting their own suburban yard from a lawn near-wasteland to a richly diverse insect-laden, bird-friendly, native-plant haven.

Humans have disrupted natural habitats in so many ways and in so many places, and this is increasingly evident in ever decreasing numbers of amphibians, butterflies, birds, and other creatures. But as gardeners and stewards of our land, we are empowered to reverse some of this disruption, simply by planting natives.

I, for one, plan to rise to Tallamy's challenge by planting more shrubs and perennials native to Connecticut. Check out the links below to learn how you can be so empowered as well.

Resources:

Connecticut Native Trees and Shrubs at A Garden of Possibilities.
Gardening with native plants, the Connecticut Botanical Society.
Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group
American Beauties, Native Plants
Dr. Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware – take some time to investigate all the links here.
Bringing Nature Home is available from Timber Press.

Categories: Gardening, On the Bookshelf.
Tags: A Garden of Possibilities, Bringing Nature Home, Connecticut Botanical Society, Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group, Doug Tallamy, gardening in Connecticut, native plants, Timber Press.

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Gardening Oops (GOOPs)- last of 2009

joenesgarden — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:00:00 +0000

December 1, 2009. Welcome to the last of my gardening blunder posts for 2009. I started writing about my gardening faux pas back in May. After being inspired by the outpouring of garden bloggers who post photos of what's blooming in their gardens on Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, the brainchild of Carol at May Dreams Gardens, I figured it might be fun to tweak Carol's idea a bit and declare the first of each month as Gardening Oops Day, GOOPs for short. On GOOPs Day, I rehash one of my gardening blunders, and ask other gardeners to do the same – come on, admit it, you've made some blunders too. Admittedly, GOOPs has not taken off like GBBD, but I really didn't expect it to - I don't have near the number of readers as May Dreams Gardens. Still, one person, Debbie at A Garden of Possibilities, has stood steadfastly by my GOOPs idea and joined in nearly every month. To Debbie, and others who have stopped by to add their GOOPS – thank you.

So here's the gig. After I confess one of my GOOPs, you can either write one of your own on your blog, leaving a teaser and link in a comment below, or simply fess up your own sordid GOOPs tale below.

Here's my December GOOPs. I'm pretty sure I will regret this in the spring. I chose not to trim the seed heads off all my coneflowers this year. The birds love to pick at the tiny seeds throughout the winter and I just did not have the heart to cut down all of these tiny birdfeeders. If lucky, I'll spot a bright little goldfinch roosting atop a prickly globed coneflower seed head while its mate feeds happily in neighboring grass. So, using fall-season reasoning, leaving the seed heads intact is worth it. I have already spotted a flock of about 15 or so bluebirds that like to feed on and under the untrimmed coneflowers – there is something very special to sipping morning coffee while glimpsing electric bluebird blue on nearby fencing. Too bad I'm not a good enough photographer to catch these bluebirds digitally – now that would be a picture! But I digress – back to GOOPs. Once spring-reasoning sets in, and all the unpecked seeds become sprouted plants, I'm pretty sure I will have a few choice words for my autumn seed benevolence, particularly if I have limited time to keep up with early spring weeding. My Echinacea purpurea collection started with just a couple of plants. I try to be thrifty when I purchase plants by spending cash on only one or two until I know how they will establish in my gardens. I was thrilled with the first set of flowers, and by the fact that I managed to keep deer from eating them – something I'm not always successful at - and I left the seed heads to self sow and help feed wintering birds. I now have huge clumps of coneflowers growing hither and yon – all self sown or transplanted to their current location after self-sowing elsewhere. I've also managed to pawn a few volunteers off to neighbors during our spring plant swap. But, a non-deadheaded blossom can quickly become a garden thug. The coneflower area I opted not to deadhead this year is currently full and expanding to parts yet unknown … and I already have many, many coneflower thugs in areas I rather they not be. Plus, I spend a fair amount of time each spring pulling the tiny seedlings to prevent my gardens from becoming completely overrun. Boy I hope the bluebirds visit in the morning – I need to plant more blue-sightings into my memory plot to draw on when I'm feeling less generous toward these seed heads next spring.

Now it's your turn. Tell what Damn-I-Wish-I-Hadn't-Done-That move you've made in your garden, yard, or farm. What better way to learn if not from each other?

Categories: GOOPs-Gardening Oops.
Tags: A Garden of Possibilities, Echinacea purpurea, gardening in Connecticut, gardening oops - GOOPs, May Dreams Gardens, purple coneflower.

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