Christmas Crafts at Holiday Lights

Holiday Lights is in full swing at the Garden, and it really is a fun event-- for guests as well as staff. I enjoy walking through the Garden and overhearing the appreciative comments and exclamations from visitors as they enjoy a lovely evening with family and friends. Beautiful lights, great music and entertainment, tasty hot chocolate, and jolly old Saint Nick himself... and much more-- it's all here!

There is one little corner of the Garden where I spend a lot of time, and that is the Christmas Crafts table in the Visitor Pavilion. We provide a nature-based holiday craft each night, which changes from week to week. So far, we have made Christmas Mice from pinecones, Nature Baskets that can be displayed on a table or hung on the tree as an ornament, and Nature Bags (sachets) that will fragrance a room. Still to come-- Pomanders and Glittered Pinecones.

The Nature Baskets and Nature Bags, in particular, would be easy to do at home as well. Take a few minutes to go outside with your kids and look around. Collect small treasures that you find-- a few small pinecones, sweetgum balls, a bit of moss, an interesting pod... all of these can become unique treasures in the eyes of a child. Back inside, take a small basket (app. 2-4 inches wide) and work together to arrange the treasures in the basket. Add a dash of color and sparkle, if you wish, by tucking in a small ornament or a bit of ribbon, and you're done! Set the basket on a table, or hang it on the tree. A larger basket can become a centerpiece or mantel decor.

Nature Bags (an updated and kid-friendly name for a sachet) are also easy. You can search outside for nature treasures, as described above, and tuck them in a small muslin bag or wrap them up hobo-style in a scrap of fabric and tie closed with a ribbon. At the Garden we use muslin tea bags, which are perfectly sized for a small sachet, and add fragrance with a few drops of essential oils that can be purchased at any craft store. We make use of cones, pods, and bits of greenery collected from around the Garden, and add ingredients like lavendar, cinnamon chips, allspice berries, cloves, and rose petals. The bowls filled with all the different ingredients are beautiful, and showcase the diversity of textures, colors, and fragrances from nature.

Though sachets are an old-fashioned craft, kids love making them and enjoy sorting through all the different ingredients to create just the right mix for their very own creation. Adults love making them, too. The craft corner is open to anyone who wants to participate. From the youngest toddler working with help from their parents to the most experienced senior, everyone has a small memento of their evening at the Garden to take with them that they made themselves. What a treat!

All in all, nature crafts are perfect for the holidays. Take a few minutes with your family to go outside and gather some treasures from your yard. Or, if you're in the area, come visit the Garden and enjoy making a nature-based Christmas Craft together and have a lovely evening of Holiday Lights with your family and friends. See you here!

Holiday Lights at the Garden Opens

Holiday Lights at the Garden opened this past weekend with record numbers. It was our busiest open ever promising a busy holiday season at the Garden.

Continuing until Thursday, Dec. 31 these spectacular evenings will include displays with more than 600,000 lights, old fashioned trains, carriage rides, holiday carols, baked treats and other activities designed to fill the holiday season with memories that will last a lifetime.

Beginning at the Garden’s grand entrance on New Hope Road guests are immediately immersed to a Christmas wonderland as they travel past the still Garden ponds and make their way into the Visitor Pavilion, where they are greeted by white trumpeting angels, decorated in holiday splendor and sounds. The décor includes a guest favorite, a spectacular 16-foot-tall Orchid tree, featuring more than 300 orchids.

In the Garden guests are invited to enjoy a walking tour through a dazzling light display encompassing six separate gardens, The Orchid Conservatory and surrounding landscape that presents spectacular light displays at every turn. Guests can walk through a grand 30-foot tall tree of lights, visit the icy White Garden or the festive Canal Garden. A captivating display of lights engulfs guests in every direction.

The Orchid Conservatory offers a chance to warm up, and see two garden-scale trains snaking through the tropical plants and holiday favorites.

Carriage rides through a portion of the display are available Thursday through Sunday evenings for an additional fee.

Please see our web site http://www.dsbg.org/ for the latest information.

Lighting the Holidays by the Numbers

By Dec. 26 each year, Jim Summey, our director of grounds, has already started thinking about next Christmas. He has to in order to figure out how to string so many Christmas lights they could reach from the Belmont attraction to Concord Mills Mall.

Holiday Lights at the Garden runs from the day after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27 to Dec. 31, but the planning continues all year beginning with a critique from staff of the current show. Monthly planning meetings keep staff on target for the opening night that has become one of the Garden’s busiest days of the year. The display, entertainment, activities, food service, guest services, parking and other logistics must all be arranged seamlessly.

For 33 nights the Garden becomes a spectacle of light, entertainment, tradition, nostalgia, cheer and merriment. Old fashioned trains, carriage rides, holiday carols, baked treats and other activities are designed to fill the holiday season with memories for guests that will last a lifetime.

Summey begins the project in early October, hiring as many as five temporary staff to assist full and part time staff as well as volunteers. Decorating takes six weeks, starting with the outer areas of the garden and finishing with the Visitor Pavilion.It will take about 2,500 man hours to complete the installation

More than 600,000 lights on 12,000 strands illuminate the entrance on New Hope Road, the roadway, the ponds, the buildings and about eight acres of formal gardens. Put end to end, these strands would stretch for more than 30 miles.

About 540,000 of the lights in the garden are LED lights which burn cooler and use 90 percent less electricity than the mini lights most people use in their homes. The Garden uses about 2,000 drop cords to run lights from existing power supplies.

So as you can tell we're well on our way. Next week we are expect Scheneider Tree Care, who will do some of the high work for us. So we'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Ho Ho Holidays!

The final days of the Indian Summer are waning, the foliage is turning, and all of the grocery stores are competing for the best pumpkin prices. While for many it's a time to warm up some cider and pull out the nice fuzzy sweaters (you know, the ones you wash the first time and your dryer gets filled with tiny shreds of old kleenex, prompting the question, "when was I sick last?"), for the garden it means

OH MY IT'S ALREADY HOLIDAY SEASON AGAIN!!!

So begins the hustle and bustle at the garden!

Holiday lights is an increasingly important time of year for garden visitation, and no wonder! Beautiful twinkling lights, hot cider, santa claus, carolers, fireworks, and vivid tropical orchids all come together to create a memorable evening for families at the garden.

With so many different items to consider, our entire staff participates in the preparations. Horticulture has been busy as bees with pansy planting and refreshing tired summer plants through all of the nasty drizzly weather. They are truly warriors! Jim Summey and his lightning bugs are working hard on stringing thousands of lights throughout the gardens- no small feat! The conservatory crew is prepping 300 orchids for the tree (if you haven't seen this you NEED TO) and putting together a special centerpiece for the conservatory. Events has lined up a fantastic array of musical entertainment, and education has cooked up some super holiday crafts that will be enjoyed by young and old. All in all this is shaping up to be our best year ever, so go ahead and mark your calendars now to visit us between November 27th and December 31st!

Be sure to check your mail soon for details on this years events, I know you'll just love it!

PS gang... Be on the lookout for a couple of big, waddling, rosy cheeked pregnant ladies when you're here this fall. Gail Allen and Erin Murphy (that's moi) are expecting a pair of garden babies this November! So if we come charging through like angry bulls don't be afraid- unless of course there's a line for the restrooms!

Celebrating 10 Years

In October 1999, Daniel J. Stowe and his family joined with captains of industry, horticulturalists, designers, philanthropists, political dignitaries and even royalty in celebrating the realization of his dream. Ten years after setting aside nearly 400 acres, followed by years of planning and fundraising, Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden open in grand fashion.

This stunning piece of lakefront property that once served as a working farm has put itself on the proverbial map in those years, becoming a world class botanical garden recognized by its peers, the media and guests each and every day. Attendance, which has grown gradually over the years, has mushroomed to more than 100,000.

Attracting top talent and best practices from the botanical garden world—from Longwood’s Philadelphia, from Chicago, Dallas, San Diego and more—the Garden has developed at a rapid pace. HGTV named it one of the nation’s 20 great gardens and USA Today called it one of the top 10 gardens in which to “welcome fall with a flourish.”

The Garden now hosts nearly 10,000 people annually for education programs; it welcomes visitors from all 50 states, sees a large handful of guests from foreign countries and attracts 35% of the Garden’s attendance from outside the three local counties. What began as the small garden on New Hope Road has become a sprawling oasis of color, texture and structure. Since opening a little more than 18 months ago, The Orchid Conservatory has dazzled some 175,000 people and membership rolls have blossomed at nearly 5,000 individual, household and corporate members.

Since the formal gardens opened in 1999, several large and small additions from the master plan have been made. Among them was the opening of the White Garden. Since 2003 more than 100 couples have begun their lives together each year at this and surrounding spots. More impressive, was the January 2008 opening of The Orchid Conservatory, where tropical plants from around the world have come to the Carolinas in spectacular artistic fashion.

This month the Garden takes a look back at its 10 years to help guests learn more about the Garden, its past and its future. Staff has planned a month-long celebration that includes a new display on the history as well as the master plan and events planned in the months to come.

"All Good Things Must Come To An End"

Susan and I began the task of monitoring the bluebird boxes at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden on February 5th of this year. To borrow a phrase attributed to Chaucer from the mid-14th century, “All Good Things Must Come To An End”. And, as this was true in the 14th century, it remains true today. Our monitoring of the bluebird nest boxes came to an end a few weeks ago at the end of August.

The bluebirds at DSBG are still flying about and can be seen perching on some of the nest boxes, but they are through raising their families now. That work is finished until next year but they will still be busy looking for food and shelter to get them through the coming winter.

It was an interesting year on the bluebird trail. We had our share of ups and downs. We were thrilled to see chicks ready to fledge their nests and we were subsequently discouraged to find ant infestations that destroyed both chicks and eggs.

We did make an effort to reduce wasp infestations by putting foil on the inside tops of the nest boxes. But, the wasps were smarter than we were. They just decided to build their nests on the inside sides of the boxes instead. We can’t be certain if this in itself was helpful to the bluebird population but we did see an increase in eggs laid and chicks fledged this year. We cannot really do an apples to apples comparison of the data as we began monitoring later in 2008 than we did this year, we foiled the inside tops of the boxes and we also relocated some of the boxes from 2008 to 2009. With so many variables it is difficult if not impossible to draw conclusions.

In 2008, we recorded 28 total nests, 103 eggs laid and 56 bluebirds fledged.

In 2009, we recorded 28 total nests, 132 eggs laid and 67 bluebirds fledged.

The one thing we can say with certainty is that DSBG provides 33 nest boxes for the bluebirds’ use and the bluebirds used them more this year than last year. In 2008, bluebirds built nests in only 17 of the boxes. And this year, 21 of the boxes were used for nest building.

Even though the Eastern Bluebirds have finished their family business for this season there are still plenty of birds to see when visiting the garden. With the fall migration, it is a great time to visit the garden and observe the birds passing by. Susan and I will continue to come to the garden during the fall migration and we hope to see you there as well.

They're Here!

It’s that time of the year again where The Orchid Conservatory and the Garden becomes home to some very special insects, butterflies! Some of the species we have this year include monarchs, painted ladies, swallowtails and mourning cloaks. The most fascinating part is some of the butterflies we receive come to us in the form of a chrysalis.

The beautiful butterfly you normally see goes through a long process before it becomes what you see. Everyone knows the short version of metamorphosis: caterpillar-larvae-butterfly. In our regular gardens, you may come across caterpillars. The Garden has some naturally so we don’t order any of those. For our Something’s A-Flutter exhibit, we receive butterflies both in the pupae stage (a chrysalis), and adulthood (butterfly).

Our first order of chrysalides came in on Tuesday. Enthusiastic volunteers and staff were armed with cotton balls and pins ready to prepare these little gems for display. We receive the chrysalides from butterfly farms via UPS or FedEx. When we get the package, the chrysalides are packed in foam cases, with individual slots. We’re expecting to receive several hundred chrysalides a week! After gently removing the chrysalides, we create artificial silk by taking a tiny amount of glue and gathering a small piece of cotton ball so it sticks to the chrysalis. Usually in nature, this silk would allow the chrysalis to hang from a twig, but we just take pins and hang the chrysalis up by the cotton.

Chrysalides are different depending on the species of the butterfly. The most impressive chrysalis is the monarch. With its seafoam green case and sparkling gold accents, the monarch chrysalis looks like the focal point of a fine piece of jewelry. Other chrysalides look more natural like a leaf such as the painted ladies. The reason why the monarch chrysalis is so pretty is because the case is a warning signs for predators to stay away. The monarch doesn’t have a very a nice taste. However, the painted ladies taste very good to predators so they require more camouflage to blend in with the natural environment. All of our chrysalides are safe from predators because we display them in a case for you to see part of the butterfly life cycle.

Then we just wait. The chrysalis will turn black and in some cases then clear. The monarch will turn clear and you can see the bright orange colors. When the butterfly hatches, it releases its extra blood it no longer needs (miconium) so don’t be surprised if you see red on the bottom of the display case. Then the emerging butterfly grabs onto the chrysalis while it pumps blood from its abdomen into its wings. The wings are smaller and look like folded blankets when first hatching. After pumping its wings, the butterfly is ready to feed and fly around. The hatching process is different depending on the species. We had some butterflies hatching on Wednesday, only a day later! Painted ladies are quick to hatch, while the swallowtails take a little longer. If you’re lucky, you can see the process yourself in our Conservatory. Be sure to check out both our friends under metamorphosis and our already fluttering friends!

Food Fight

They say that if you truly love something you have to let it go. I'm not quite sure who "they" are, but "they" are also champions of other depressing adages such as "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch", "anything that can go wrong will", and my personal favorite, "beggars can't be choosers". Well kids, in this situation life truly imitates art. Perhaps I should tell my story...

The Orchid Conservatory features a lovely collection of tropical fruit trees and shrubs. Every effort is made to coax these wonders into producing fruit, which not only do our visitors enjoy viewing, but we, the staff, enjoy consuming. The fruits of our labor if you will. Some of these plants are bounteous, easy to grow and productive to the point of nuisance. The bananas would fall under this category, each season bringing us up to 100 pounds of fruit that ripen simultaneously and make us all sick of banana bread and pudding. Others are finicky plants and have very specific cultural requirements that must be met in order for fruit production to occur. In this latter category are the citrus, the chocolate tree (evil evil thing!) and the subject of our saga, the pineapple.

After a long years wait, defying rot, pests, and a freak boiler failure that plunged the conservatory into a night of forty degree temperatures, our pineapple plant sent up a lovely pink flower spike! Slowly but surely each flower dropped off, revealing a spiky green pineapple segment. A pineapple is actually a compound fruit- one that is composed of many small fruits fused together. Over a period of weeks the fruit grew to a decent size of about 8 inches long. As hot summer days ensued the ripening process began, changing the pineapple from a rock hard, dull green rock to a fragrant golden fruit. The scent of it hung in the air, enticing us with the promise of a treat no grocery store could deliver.

As luck would have it, two of my esteemed staff celebrate birthdays within the same week of August. A wonderful plan formed in my mind. What better birthday cake for the conservatory staff than a scrumptious pineapple upside-down cake, made with the luxurious fruit of our very own pineapple crop? I stroked the pineapple gently that Friday before leaving for the weekend. "Monday my dear, you become a culinary masterpiece." Over the weekend I gathered the other ingredients for my super-special-tropical-birthday-surprise-cake and planned our party for the next Tuesday.

Sadly, fate intervened over the weekend. Upon arriving at work Monday morning I received the report- the pineapple had vanished. A year's worth of love and care disappeared, replaced by a torn and ugly stub. All I can hope is that who ever took it enjoyed it, that it wasn't just tossed in the back of a fridge to turn to mush or thrown off a bridge to see how big of a splash it made. If the culprit is out there reading this enjoy your pineapple, you will never have another like it and I imagine the wheel of karma will turn your way eventually.

I guess we'll have banana bread instead.

Here's How We Do It

This is the second year of the Bluebird Trail here at the garden and we’ve been in the saddle, so to speak, since the beginning of the project. We aren’t sure how we were selected to monitor the birds’ activities, but it must have been because we talk “birds” a lot. At any rate, it just sort of evolved and we consider it a privilege, as well as a pleasure, to keep tabs on the Eastern Bluebirds which we do one morning each week from mid-March until mid-September.

So what exactly do we do? We start out by taking a golf cart to the beginning of the trail and then we start knocking on doors (nestboxes). Knocking is supposed to alert the female that we’re going to open the box. If there’s one in there, she usually flies out but we’ve found that sometimes she stays on the nest and gives us “the eye.” In fact, in several cases the bird has been so obstinate that we’ve returned to the particular box later, after she has left, to check on what was happening in there.

We check each box for evidence of nesting such as a partial nest, a complete nest, or no interest in that box at all. If it’s a complete nest, we carefully peek in to see if there are eggs and if so, how many are in the nestcup that week. If there are chicks in the nest, we count heads (often wide-open mouths) and compare them to the number of eggs we had recorded. If the chicks have been in the nest into the second week, we know it’s about time for them to fledge so we’re very careful when opening the box and peeking in. We don’t want them to fly before their time.

All of this information is recorded on a checksheet which we developed. We have a sheet for each box, and the sheet shows four (sometimes five) weeks of data that we’ve collected for the month. Often we have to refer to the prior month’s sheet to see what had been happening in a box. There’s a section for additional comments and our notes in this column often are more helpful than just the numbers.

So we make the rounds checking boxes and doing some other birding along the way. We keep lists of all the birds we see during the couple of hours we spend on the trail. That information will be useful someday, also, and folks always want to know what we’ve seen. Ours is a great assignment!

Big Changes Coming to the Orchid Conservatory... OR... Fantasy and Reality Rarely Mesh

I guess the best place to start is all the way back at the beginning.

Once upon a time there were grand plans in place for an Orchid Conservatory at the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. The garden staff anxiously awaited architect's and garden designer's plans for a luxuriant tropical oasis. When these plans arrived they ooohed and aaahed and there was much rejoicing in the land. Part of this glorious vision was that of lush vines covered in blooms cascading and rambling over the structure of the building, creating a true jungle vision and camouflaging the ugliness of man's creation.
"How perfect!" they exclaimed. "There are no steel beams in the tropical rain forest. It'll be beautiful!"
And it was. Careful research and plant selection began to find THE PERFECT vines and lianas for the space.
"They must be beautiful." the staff said. "They must be strong and healthy" others added.
Come October the most excellent vines were selected and planted lovingly at the column bases of the Orchid Conservatory. By the grand opening in January they were all they had wanted them to be. With lots of sun, water, and a little TLC the vines thrived rambling, scrambling, and climbing towards the sky. The staff was delighted, they had done well.
Through the first year the vines grew, and grew, and grew, and the nervousness began.
"Ok, you can STOP growing now." The staff said. But the vines had grown so tall they could not hear them from the tippy top of the conservatory, fifty feet from the ground. And if they had, they would have only replied
"We can't stop. We have indeterminate mature sizes you see. You've fed us, watered us, and loved us, so we GROW."
"Indeterminate?" said the staff. "What on earth do you mean you can't stop? This label right here says thirty feet is your maximum size! And this book says twenty five!"
"Ahhhhh, said the vines. Books and tags tell lies. In a normal environment of harsh sun, drought, leaf eating animals and insects, and an occasional hurricane our growth is limited. But here we are in paradise and nothing harms us, we can reach our full potential and cover all that is here to cover."
"Oh." Said the staff.

The moral of this story is be very careful with what you plant, and be sure to temper your desire for instant gratification with knowledge that down the road you will have to maintain, yes maintain, the plants you select. Vines especially can quickly get out of hand, as any of us who just had to have a purple wisteria on the arbor now know. The garden's solution to this increasingly vigorous problem is removal of the vines, once so small and cute and now raging thugs from the conservatory all together. Considering said vines are now fifty to sixty feet from the ground this will include some extreme acrobatics and equipment provided by a local tree service. So next time you step into the Orchid Conservatory and grimace at the exposed steel beams of the roof supports, remember our tale, and don't let this happen to YOU.

The End

All Predators Great and Small (with apologies to James Herriot)

Baby birds certainly have a hard time growing up in this big, wonderful world. They have quite a battle on their wings before they even take their very first flight.

I think we all are aware of the common predators to birds. There are snakes, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, cats and even other birds vying for the eggs or for the chicks. But, there are a couple of predators we didn’t even have on our radar screen this year. Our observations this year are that size really does not matter when it comes to predators.

We have had a bit of a problem this year with ant infestations. I am guessing they are fire ants but I can’t say this with a total degree of certainty. All I know is that these little devils do bite. And, I also know I’m a lot more alert about where I step when I step out of that golf cart!

We are treating the areas around some of the boxes where we observed the ants and we’re hoping that this doesn’t continue to be a major problem going forward. It is a mystery why we have had several boxes infested with ants this year when it didn’t seem to be a problem at all last year. We did have a great deal more rain this spring than we did last year and perhaps that is one factor that might account for the increase in ant infestations. Susan Holland’s photograph above shows the sad sight of what these tiny predators can do to a nest box full of chicks.

So, now you’re wondering aren’t you, what the “Great” predator is since I’ve already told you about the “Small” one. Well, it certainly was a surprise to me, but after reading up on the American Crow, I found out that they eat just about anything. Susan’s grandson Peter joined us on our rounds this morning and he happened to see an American Crow with something quite large in its beak. From a distance it looked like it could have been a mouse so we decided to drive over and take a closer look. Our crow had dropped his little snack and it looked to us like it was a bluebird chick. Who knew?

Well, enough of the bad news about predators. Let’s talk about the good news!! The good news is that we are still seeing a great deal of activity in many of the nest boxes. We have 27 bluebird eggs and 10 chicks in the boxes right now. We are confident that we’ll count several new chicks in the boxes in the coming weeks. There is still a lot of summer left for the birds and a lot of summer left for us to enjoy them.

Family Gardening: Garden Maintenance

I hope you’re having fun in the garden with your family! Now that the planting is done, the focus shifts more to maintenance. This is sometimes regarded as a chore, but I have to admit that I really enjoy it. It’s one of the few excuses to just putter around in your garden observing the fruits of your labor. It never ceases to amaze me how much plants can grow and change in a short time—it’s a miracle in every plant!
While there is a lot to do in the garden, endless weeding doesn’t come across as appealing to anyone—least of all your kids. In order to prevent garden maintenance from seeming onerous, try the following tips to keep it fun and engaging for the whole family:

• Mulch magic. Mulch is one of your best friends in the garden—it cuts way down on weeds, and helps conserve water in the soil as well. There is no single best material for mulch—I recommend an organic material that will break down over time and improve the soil, as well as a material that is locally available. This could be pine straw here in the southeast, or bark mulch, or even a thick layer of newspaper covered with leaves or straw. At my own home I have a lot of trees, so we create our own mulch by shredding the autumn leaves with the lawnmower. The result is a great mulch, and I feel good that I am not adding bags of leaves to the local landfill. I add a thick layer of leaves 2-4 inches deep to all my garden beds in the fall. As the leaves break down they enhance the soil by adding wonderful organic matter. When I plant new flowers and veggies in the spring I dig through the leafy mulch, turning some of it into the soil in the process, and then add more after planting to prevent weeds from taking hold.
• Weeding wizards. Yes, weeding is a part of gardening, but it doesn’t have to be a burdensome chore. Keep it light and fun. First off, don’t let the weeds get to be taller than your children before you pull them; instead, make a tour of the garden once or twice a week to scout for new little encroaching weeds and pull them while they’re small. If your child has a difficult time distinguishing between weeds and sprouts of plants that you want, then focus in on just one type of weed at a time. Proclaim a ‘weed of the day’ and show them a sample, then have a contest to see who can find the greatest number of that specific weed. (It goes without saying that you should choose whatever weed is most prolific in the garden for your weed of the day.) The winner becomes the Weeding Wizard for the day. It can become a kind of a scavenger hunt, providing a lot of fun and some great quality time in the garden for you and your kids.
• Dig in! Kids simply love to dig. They can expend endless energy and will generate great enthusiasm digging around and playing in the soil. There are a lot of discoveries to make in digging: small leaves, twigs, and rocks that make up the soil… different types and textures of soil… the joys of mud pies when water is added… engineering feats to be achieved in creating holes, tunnels, and caves for small imaginary villages… insects that make their home in the soil… and best of all, earthworms! If you have young kids—toddlers to middle elementary—leave a little patch of your garden open as a digging zone. They will want to continue their digging adventures long after the planting is done!
• Wonders of water. Kids like watering even more than they like digging. Try to make it as easy as you can for them to water their plants. It’s a wonderful natural lesson in taking responsibility, and helps them learn to think beyond themselves in caring for living things. Plus, it’s just fun! I worked with a daycare center a few years back to create a small garden for their kids, and watering was their absolute favorite activity. To make it easy for them to be independent in their watering, we placed a large storage bin under the faucet and used it as a sort of watering trough. When it was garden maintenance time, we simply turned on the faucet and let the bin fill with water. We kept a bunch of small child-sized watering cans by the bin, so that the kids could help themselves to water. Several of them at a time could fill their watering cans in the watering trough. They could handle the diminutive watering cans with ease, and the small volume that the containers held ensured that they would not overwater and ‘drown’ the plants. They were wonderful caretakers, and loved that they could be independent and do it themselves.

What tips and tricks do you have up your sleeves to help keep garden maintenance fun for kids and the entire family? I’d love to hear them!

Happy Gardening!
Dr. Cindy

So Who Is Really Living Here?

It’s not that we don’t like House Wrens. We do appreciate the male’s beautiful warbling song that lets us know there’s pride in his chosen nest site. It’s just that he has chosen a nestbox that is supposed to be for the Eastern Bluebird. The bluebird builds a tidy nest, usually with pine needles because of their availability but we’ve seen dried grass used also. However, the House Wren stuffs the box with coarse sticks, cramming them in so tightly that it’s almost impossible to check for eggs. The actual nest cup is deep inside along the back side of the box so we dutifully (and carefully) tilt the nest outward and downward in order to see into it. If there are eggs or chicks, we leave them. However, if it’s the beginning of a nest we remove it but, usually, the next week the wren has been at it again.

Now we have discovered something new – new to us, that is. There are double layer nests in some of the boxes. The House Wren is either an opportunist or is lazy but, then, there may be a fine line of distinction there and could be a subject for musing in a different venue. On the bluebird trail here at the garden, we have several nestboxes in which the bluebirds started building nests but, somehow, the wrens took over. After all, they are feisty little birds. In one there was one bluebird egg already laid and we expected to find a few more eggs the following week. Instead, we found a stick nest built on top of the pine needle nest and the bluebird egg was gone.

We know that House Wrens usually choose boxes that are near woody areas and we thought we had placed them far enough from trees and bushy areas. However, now we know these birds will use boxes that are out in open areas and, in fact, will take over the boxes already being used by the bluebirds.

Wrens are known to destroy bluebird eggs by punching holes in them, but they also will attack chicks in the nest and toss them out. They are a major problem if one is trying to have a successful bluebird trail. Obviously we are distressed when we find these stick nests, but we also know that it’s nature at work. But double layers? Oh, come on!

Family Gardening: What to Plant?

There are so many plants to choose from these days, it can be hard to know where to start. For those of you planning and planting a family garden with your kids (or with a group of kids such as a summer day camp, scout group or church group), here are a few ideas to help frame some interesting options that kids will enjoy:

• Giants, Minis, and Oddballs. When planting vegetables, think about oddities or extremes. They can be used to create a vegetable garden that is fun and interesting for kids. Also, most kids are more willing to try eating something that they have grown themselves, especially if it’s something different from the norm. Try planting giant varieties planted next to miniature ones to create a contrast, or strange-looking varieties. For a nice miniature tomato, try growing cherry tomatoes (my personal favorite is Sungold) right next to a giant variety like Park’s Whopper. Yard-long beans—an Asian type of string bean that truly does grow very long—are a fun bean to plant on a trellis or bamboo teepee. A nice colorful vegetable is the beautiful Swiss Chard called Bright Lights—the multi-hued stems look like old-fashioned ribbon candy, and create a lovely little rainbow right in your garden! You’ll be looking for recipes to try with your new-found crop. Don’t forget squash—it’s a great plant that is extremely easy to grow, so you can almost guarantee success. A few squash will produce enough to feed your entire family and all your friends, and there are some fun ‘different’ varieties, too, such as a small round squash called Eight Ball.
• Floral Bounty. There are endless flowers that would be ideal for a children’s garden area. Zinnias would top my list (any kind), along with Sunflowers (Helianthus) and Tithonias, also called Mexican Sunflowers—they have bright orange daisy-like flowers, and the leaves are fuzzy and shaped like a dinosaur’s foot/paw. (No, I’ve never seen a dinosaur’s foot/paw-- which is it, anyway? However, this is what the kids I’ve worked with say, and it really does look like a three-toed foot. They make great dinosaur leaf prints…) There are so many options it’s hard to limit—it really just depends on the space you have available and the amount of sun or shade you have. Take your child and let them pick out a few flowers to try. It's a great outing. Plus, experimenting with something new fosters a wonderful aptitude for exploration and discovery—key components to critical thinking that are essential for developing young scientists as well as creative artists!
• Herbal Delights. Create a fragrant sensory experience by making sure to plant a few herbs in your garden. Many have fragrant foliage, and it is simply delightful to brush against them and release their scent as you are working in the garden or just strolling through. Plus, you have the added benefit of having fresh herbs just outside your door that you can add to your meals. Basil is extremely easy to grow, as is mint, rosemary, and lemon balm. All of these—and many more—are very kid-friendly, and very commonly available at your local nursery. I especially like lemon balm and mint, as you can steep them and make your own herbal tea, or use them to flavor your iced tea. Some folks say that they will ‘invade,’ but I have never found them to be truly invasive—they just like to spread out. Makes me feel like a really successful gardener! They are easy to keep in check—you just pull up the surface runners, and then you have some to share with a friend.
• Heirloom Heritage. Try planting some heirloom varieties. These are plants that have been grown for generations, with seed collected and passed down from one person to another. With heirloom plants you can collect and save your own seed to plant again next year, which is a fun and interesting activity in and of itself at the end of the season—a wonderful scavenger hunt in your own backyard! Heirloom vegetables, in particular, are some of the best-tasting varieties of vegetables you can grow. Many companies carry heirloom varieties along with hybridized ones—heirloom tomatoes like Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter are popular, and there are many more available. Plant several different types and conduct your own taste test—they will be the best-tasting tomatoes you ever put in your mouth!
• Gourd-geous. Last but not least, grow some gourds. These are just plain fun—they grow very rapidly, and it’s amazing to see just how fast the gourds grow and take shape. Harvest some for bird houses or other crafts. You and your kids will all be enchanted to have a bird house you grew yourself! There are an endless variety of vegetables, herbs, and flowers to plant—I could go on and on. The point is to have fun experimenting and try some new things.

Obviously, this list of plants could go on and on. I would love to hear what the favorite plants are in your family garden. What do your kids enjoy? What do you have the most success with? How do you use the harvest from your garden? Please write and let me know!

Happy Gardening!

Dr. Cindy

What's New on the DSBG Bluebird Trail

May has been a busy month for the bluebirds at the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden.  The first brood of chicks from the nest boxes have fledged their nests and we are now seeing the second brood of the year.  We noted that 8 of the nest boxes have a second brood and we counted a total of 28 eggs in those boxes.  We also have one box with an active house wren nest.

If you are monitoring a bluebird box in your own back yard, do not be alarmed to see that the number of eggs in the second brood is smaller than the first.  This is what we are seeing as well. We do have some smaller broods of just one, two or three eggs.

This year on the bluebird trail we had a slightly rare occurence in one of the nest boxes that we did not observe last year.  During our monitoring of the boxes on April 30th we discovered that one nest box contained white eggs!  The photograph above was taken on that day.  After checking the box we drove a short distance away and waited.  Sure enough a female bluebird flew right into the box. The eggs were also consistent with the size of the blue bluebird eggs that we are noting in the other boxes and the nest was consistent with the other bluebird nests.

According to www.sialis.org, up to 4 to 5 percent of bluebirds lay white eggs.  The Sialis website also indicates that white eggs can occur in all three species of bluebirds and that the white eggs are just as fertile as the blue eggs.  From what I read on this website, a female that lays white eggs will always lay white eggs.  So, if we have blue eggs in the same nest box for the second brood, then another female has now inhabited the box.  It will be interesting in the coming weeks to see if we have white or blue eggs in that same box.

As always, one other good thing about being outside monitoring the bluebird boxes is that it affords us the opportunity to see what new visitors we have flying around the garden.  In addition to the usual suspects we saw a few new species of birds during May that we did not see in April.  We observed the Indigo Bunting, American Goldfinch, Barn Swallow, Red-winged Blackbird, Orchard Oriole, Red-eyed Vireo and the Chimney Swift.

When you pay your next visit to the garden I hope you'll take some time and observe the birds as well as the beautiful plants and flowers.  Please drop us a line if you see a species of bird that you do not normally see so that we can be on the lookout for them as well.  Enjoy the garden and happy birding!

The Garden Becomes a Tropical Oasis

Last week, the Garden began an impressive transition from Southern Spring to Tropical Oasis even as local nighttime temperatures dipped into the 30s.

Beginning last Monday, a strong force of staff and volunteers began rolling through the Garden to begin the work of creating the display that will be featured from May 29 to Aug. 30. Tuesday, director of Grounds Jim Summey reported that progress was smooth and that the plantings will likely be complete for Memorial Day weekend. That, however, will only provide a taste of the spectacular display guests will experience this summer.

The tropical display of bold summer colors combined with our perennial displays will make you want to visit the Garden again and again. Bright bromeliads, colorful coleus and hot-colored lantana will welcome guests for a spectacular experience all summer long.

These vibrant colors and striking shapes and textures come from around the globe. Pentas from North Africa surround familiar salvia while the South African plumbago gives a cooler effect with its periwinkle blue flowers. Also featured are the bright magenta leaves of the Hawaiian Ti and the unusual foliage of a South American bromeliad.

There is of course, much more to the display and we'll let you in on more as the summer goes on, so check back here often. Or better yet, visit. In addition to our daytime hours, we're open Thursday nights June 11-Aug. 20 for Garden Nights.

In addition, one Saturday a month is set aside for our Wild About Summer series. The first event is "Bee-Wild" on June 13. Then July 11 is set aside for "Wild-Life" when we welcome the Carolina Raptor Center and the Schiele Museum. Finally, you can make plans to join us for "Wild Wings: Hummingbird Banding" Aug. 1.

Out, Out Dastardly Beast

In addition to having House Wren predators in the bluebird nestboxes at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, there is a serious problem with paper wasps. Last year only one box was taken over by them, and we learned not to go near that particular box. Our thoughts were to let the wasps have that one, and we designated it the "bad wasp box." This year it's a very different story. Wasps have moved into four of the boxes and that represents twelve percent of the boxes along the bluebird trail.

Early in the monitoring season and before the birds started placing nesting material in the boxes, we lined the inside of the tops with aluminum foil. We pre-cut the foil and secured it with double-sided tape. It was our understanding that the wasps prefer the top sides of the boxes, but now we know that isn't always the case. The vertical sides are also enticing. When the weather was still cool in the mornings, we made an attempt to remove the wasps and the stem/core of the beginning nests. We thought we were quite brave, both the one using the "weapon", in this case an umbrella, as well as the one taking the picture. However, the following week the beast was in the box again, building a new nest in the same spot.

Since then it has been an on-going battle and we are in a dilemma as to what to do. We don't want to spray the boxes with insecticide as that would contaminate them for future use by the birds. We have read that rubbing a bar of soap on the insides will keep the wasps from building, but that seemed too labor-intensive. After all, the two of us are volunteers here at the garden. We have other lives, too. We've considered removing the affected boxes from their poles but, again, who is brave enough for this job?

So don't let this little soliloquy discourage you from establishing your own bluebird trail. Just know that the Eastern Bluebird has a few challenges of its own. Checking boxes each week gives us great pleasure, but we do give the ones with wasps in them wide berths.