I’d say it’s easy to plant a garden full of attractive plants except that it isn’t so easy. There’s way too much to choose from and what qualifies as attractive changes, for me at least, by the day. Some days it’s green flowers; other minutes it’s spectacularly enormous leaves; sometimes it’s blue foliage or anything orange. But it’s very easy to find plants that are attractive… in other ways … to other garden visitors, such as insects and birds, bees, wasps and butterflies. And planting those plants turns the garden from a pretty picture into an experience.

Every year we change the Display Garden around a bit. Some years we focus on flower colors (green, blue, anything that amazing apricot shot through with magenta…), sometimes we play more with texture (giant leaves… you catch my drift) and I have never known these gardens to not hum – audibly and visually – with activity. The gardens look alive because we plant such a variety that there are always plenty of plants for the insects and birds. But this year we tried to plant, in the big display garden bed in particular, ONLY what would be attractive to pollinators.The garden is buzzing! And lucky for us and for all the garden’s human visitors, we didn’t have to leave aesthetics out of the design equation.

The hands-down busiest (and hands-off busiest if you have any healthy respect for bees and wasps on a mission) is the sea holly (Eryngium planum). There must be an easy dozen different species on it at any given mid-day moment. And it’s highly attractive to me too, fulfilling the blue foliage (and flower) category so handsomely along with having an excellent architectural prickliness. When the sea holly goes by, the more subtly lovely (green) flowers on the mountain mint (Pycnanathemum muticum) will likely draw the most visitors.

But the butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which is a stunning shade of brilliant orange that incidentally looks amazing with sea holly, not only attracts all sorts of bees, wasps and butterflies to its flowers, the plant itself is the only larval food source (along with every other member of the Asclepias/milkweed family) for the beloved Monarch butterfly. It’s always great fun to attract butterflies to the garden, and it’s even better to give them a reason to stay. At least 4 generations will go from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly over the course of the summer in a garden with an Asclepias restaurant. When Gail and I started researching plants for this garden we were thrilled to note that a lot of the best nectar sources are also popular host plants for all sorts of butterfly and moth caterpillars – like goldenrod (Solidago), Aster, false indigo (Baptisia), Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium) and even Zinnia.

Do you plant anything specifically for bees and butterflies? What are the most attractive plants in your garden?

I’m very sorry to have to report that Ginkgo Jr., Blithewold’s fledgling red-tailed hawk died this week. Veterinarians at The Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Rhode Island treated him for a traumatic head injury which left him permanently blind in one eye and unable to eat solid food. Because he would never have been able to fend for himself and because a lifetime of tube feeding is not a stress-free option for any animal in captivity, a difficult decision was made. I am certain that he received the very best care, that all of the options were thoughtfully weighed, and remain so grateful to everyone who was involved in his rescue.

I hope Ginkgo Jr. is cruising the heavenly thermals with all of the awesome grace and dignity of his species restored; and that his parents, Rose and Ginkgo Sr., will continue to call Blithewold home and go on to rear many more chicks here.

Yesterday morning everyone at Blithewold – staff, volunteers and even a few visitors – ran an emotional gamut from excitement and pride, to awe, to dismay, fear, sadness and around again to hope. All for the love of our resident red-tailed hawks.

Gail, Tara and I could hear the loud squeaking as we made our way the Rose Garden and were amazed to see a young hawk on the front drive, obviously freshly fledged. He/she was crying for food like they do – hawks need to be taught how to hunt but the parents will keep feeding their young until they’ve got the hang of it.

He let us get pretty close and did make some adorable attempts to fly but it became clear to some of us with more experience with birds that he was unwell. (Who knew that Karen, our executive director, used to work with raptors?!) Evidently the first red flag was that we shouldn’t have been able to get so close. Another indicator of distress came with the information that he had actually left the nest for the first time two days prior and should be flying by now. It also appeared that something was wrong with one of his eyes. (I thought he closed his eyes when I came close just to make me disappear, not because of anything amiss.)

I have always been reluctant to interfere with nature and her natural processes (and, yes, I know that’s a bit ironic given my line of work) but I would generally rather assume that the animals know what they’re doing better than me since as a typical human, I am apt to anthropomorphize. So I’m glad that humans with a better sense of hawk’s natural processes were in charge yesterday. Karen made the call to the Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of RI and determined to take our fledgling all the way across the Bay to their veterinary facility to be checked out.

Meanwhile, those of us working in the gardens – who all still thought everything was fine and dandy and isn’t nature wonderful! – were thrilled when mama hawk (named Rose by Karen’s sons; and papa is Ginkgo) dropped like a stone into the North Garden just feet from where we worked. She landed a rabbit and flew off to leave her baby’s next meal draped on a branch high up in the tree where he rested (still squeaking, incessantly and insistently.)

He wasn’t able to “capture” his meal. He did make it up to the branch but the meal fell and he kept crying. Fred and Dan coaxed him back down, and Dan, reluctantly (Rose was circling overhead) caught and crated him.

It’s a good thing that Karen brought him to the vet. Turns out that he had suffered some sort of head trauma which may have caused the damage to his eye. I wonder if he fell hard from the nest… He’s being tube fed and treated with pain medicine and anti-inflammatories. We don’t know yet if he’ll make it. If he recovers from his injury, he’ll still need to be taught to fly and hunt, which may take anywhere from 3-6 months including recovery time. But if he does get better, Ginkgo Jr. (who probably is a male given his present size and weight – though hawks can’t be reliably sexed until closer to maturity) will be released here with as much fanfare as we can muster – along with a naming contest perhaps. Fingers crossed. Talons too.

(click on any picture for larger view.)

Spiking temperatures in the heat of the sun are making us sweat and bitter winds give us the chills. Add to that the frenetic frantics of  “gotta get the gardens cleaned out NOW!” coupled with a lethargy bordering on catatonia that sets in after a day spent out: it feels for all the world like a fever. I’d say we haven’t acclimated to the season yet except that the season itself hasn’t settled out. Compared to this time last year when we had record floods and warmth, this March – perhaps compared to any recent years has been dry – the ground is actually cracked in places – and cold. We have an April Fool’s snow in the forecast and we’re all beginning to speculate that one of these days maybe we’ll pass straight from winter into summer.

But regardless of the vagaries of March (and April) weather, plants and wildlife are as feverish for spring as we are. Despite the cold winds and the little hints of snow and even the lack of real rain everything is emerging right according to plan – perhaps not 2 weeks early this year like it was last year, but inch by inch, on schedule. A good thing too because regardless of the weather, at a certain point we gardeners can’t restrain ourselves any longer from cleaning winter out of the gardens. Here at Blithewold we have the added incentive of getting everything tidy before Daffodil Days, which start a mere week and a half from now on April 9th (and run through May 1st.)

Gail, a couple of the Deadheads, and I cut back the North Garden yesterday and we know the timing is right because tiny kitten Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s mantle) are waking beneath the scrunk of last year’s leaves, caryopteris and perovskia buds are swollen and as usual, the ‘Ballerina’ roses have even begun to break – sooner than any other roses on the property. Bees are out working the scilla (do you have any early flowers for the bees?), and Gail and I were only willing to call it quits after encountering the largest spider this side of the tropics in one of our tub-trugs. Today the Rockettes cleaned up the Rock Garden where Pasque flowers were showing fuzz, tight whorls of corydalis foliage are loosening, and we all were on the lookout for hidden gems (hellebore flowers  hiding in the old epimedium leaves) and camouflaged creatures. It was a real eye-test to spot the nest inside the spirea. (Needless to say, that particular shrub didn’t get much of a haircut. – Anyone know if the nest would be this year’s or last year’s?)

Are you feeling feverish too?

Of all of our snow falls so far this winter, this one was by far the prettiest, the easiest to walk through (although it’s still a bootdeep trudge), and the most personally rewarding. My walk around Blithewold this morning was perfectly timed to catch the just-come-out sun catching the heavy glaze on the trees, and to remember why I love winter at the very same moment I was reminded that spring is coming up next.

I always think of robins as being a harbinger of spring but evidently they’re here the whole time. Why don’t we see them more often? (Or am I just not paying attention?) Today a good-sized flock of robins and cedar waxwings were working on the privet and crab apples, so intent on filling their bellies they hardly bothered to scatter when I came along.

Do you see robins year-round? Which berries are being eaten in your garden right now?