Easter Garden Tour 2021

No ants this time. Just a quick garden tour. This was recorded the day before Easter. Additional Daffodils and Easter Lilies and Tulips were set out in the garden afterward. Several plants featured in the garden had to be replanted because squirrels had removed them, mostly hyacinths and pansies, over night. Not in the video was an Easter Egg hunt I arranged with my niece who had a great time finding them all among the flowers.

White House Rose Garden

This is such a non-issue, I'm sorry to even be writing about it. I'm only doing so because I feel like no one reporting on it is a gardener.

I've been seeing articles saying things like "Melania Trump RIPS OUT historic trees," and now the White House Rose Garden looks like a graveyard symbolizing how her husband had killed America. 

I don't mean for this to be a political post so I'm focusing on what was done to the garden aspect here. 

First off I will say, given her choice of shoes, Melania probably doesn't garden regularly. (Added: There are images of her wearing sneakers while gardening but she does not look natural in them. So I'm still thinking she doesn't do a whole lot of gardening.) I question how much of the changes can really be attributed to her and not the White House Landscapers and members of the Historical Society who would be taking care of anything worth protecting. 

The main cause of the controversy is how 10 Crab Apple trees were moved. These trees were originally planted by Jackie Kennedy so there is some historic value to be had. But lots of news outlets are saying they were "Ripped Out" or "Cut Down," and sometimes both; ripped out first and cut down later just to spite them. They have, in fact, been taken to an off site location and will be replanted elsewhere on the White House grounds. 

Lots of people are reporting with pictures of the trees in Spring, when they're flowering and looking pretty. There are also lots of colorful varieties of tulips adding to their glamour. So it's not fair to compare that to how the garden looks in Summer.  

Crab Apples, when not in flower don't always look pretty, especially when they're 50 years old and have been pruned to hell over the years. Part of the reason they were removed was to allow additional space for cameras to be for member of the press to do their job. Holding press meetings outside, where there's better air flow, and sunshine, reduces the risk of Covid transferring from person to person.

Along with the red/pink, white, and blue, flowers the only addition was a much needed side walk to make the gardens more handicap accessible and enjoyable from both sides. The Trump administration is far from being environmentally friendly but the reduction in the lawn is at least beneficial, as is the addition of Anise Hyssop, a native plant acting as the blue in the gardens here. (Though it could be one of the Asian hybrid cultivars.) In a C-SPAN video of the gardens some of the White Roses actually look like they're more of a light cream or faint yellow color. 

People are now saying the garden looks like a cemetery... Personally I blame that mausoleum-like white house in the background. That's just my opinion.

My Garden on Easter

Easter is conveniently happening at the peak of wildflower season in my yard. Lots of wonderful colors to look at that are all on theme with the holiday. It's a shame my family doesn't gather at my house for this holiday but in a way it's a blessing. So many non-native bulbs though they certainly serve their purpose. The thing about Tulips, Daffodils, Hyacinths, and "Easter" Lilies is they thrive best in full sun. Almost all our native ephemerals are shade plants. It's a shame they're not sold in as much abundance or bought with the same enthusiasm.

I rarely get to show off my garden to family members I don't live with. Often the holidays they do come over my garden is transitioning from one season to the next and lacking in flowers. Despite the diversity in my garden few of the species bloom with any abundance. They don't always demonstrate their usefulness either.

My camera doesn't capture the detail it should in this photo.

Second attempt wasn't much better I should probably stop trying such wide photos of small objects.

Trees are probably the best way to entice pollinators into the garden. This beefly is a little late to the party but cooperated for a photo on a cool day on the new Witch Hazel I've added to the garden. On warm days I've seen it (more likely others) flying around on the Native Plums when they flowered then a day before those blooms closed up onto the Beach Plum tree and now onto the Apple Tree which started flowering this weekend.

Beeflies are important pollinators for certain plants like Woodland Phlox, Phlox divaricata. Long tongued bees and flies are the only insects that can reach the pollen anthers hidden deep within the tube-shaped flowers. Without them populations of these flowers diminish in size or blink out entirely. Unlike creeping phlox, Phlox divaricata is a short lived perennial. When pollination occurs though they are abundant seeders and spread far and wide.

But the other thing about beeflies is that most of them are parasites of Bumblebee hives. They invade the nests, lay a few eggs and the maggots eat the wax. Bumblebees don't really pollinate phlox though, so in order to have the pollinator of this Phlox species you need enough wildflowers and trees established to support a few bumblebee hives. 

As an aside, I did a google image search for "Bumblebee Phlox" and almost all the images that come up are of Carpenter Bees which chew holes in the sides of the Phlox flowers to gain access to the nectar and probably don't pollinate the flower. Bumblebees do visit Phlox but of the images taken I only saw the summer flowering species. Not Phlox divaricata. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it seems rare if it does.

Our ephemerals get away growing and flowering now because most trees have yet to leaf out. When they do though they secrete a small amount of sugary sap. Here a Nylanderia faisonensis worker is exploring a few leaves on the sapling I planted last year. 

Sap isn't always a good thing though. The flower buds to our Flame Azalea, Rhododendron calendulaceum, are so sticky with sap that insects that land on them get stuck. This is probably an added way to entice humming birds to visit the flower but I don't think it's always successful. More likely it's a method to prevent ants from crawling into the blooms when they open and stealing all the nectar to them selves. (I've actually found opened Flame Azalea flowers that had ants all stuck to the stems of their flowers). Whether it's intentional or not, it's probably still to the humming bird's benefit should it chance up on one.

These types of flies are becoming more abundant in my yard too. I've caught them visiting more than a few of my Trillium species. I had assumed all the large white flowering Trilliums were pollinated by bees but this photo tells another story. The pale yellow/white dots on the fly here are actually pollen. 

These are Trillium flexipes, note how fat the petals are to form a triangular shape overall and how the pollen is pale in color. 

This is Trillium grandiflorum, note the bright yellow pollen and how the petals are ruffled along the edges. The petals aren't as wide either.

I know for a fact that Honeybees and Bumblebees will visit these flowers but only when the patches are in abundance. Maybe ~25 plants all flowering within a few feet of one another? My plants aren't quite there yet but given time they'll get there.

I've found our native Jacob's Ladder, Polemonium reptans, makes a beautiful companion plant for them. They're just short enough to fill in all around underneath the Trilliums and the blue flowers are a nice addition.

I bought a nice big flat of these from New Moon Nursery a few years back. They were a pain in the ass the rip free from the plastic flat. The roots seem to push outward all the way up the plastic. I was ripping the foliage clean off the top of them and probably did that to most of them before I figured out a good method. Pushing up from the bottom worked but required a lot more force than expected. They really didn't want to come out of there!

Fernleaf Phacelia, Phacelia bipinnatifida, has FINALLY started to establish in my yard! Of all the spring ephemerals in eastern North America, this is probably one of the best ones to plant for honeybees... a shame I don't have hives anymore. I've been trying to get this plant to grow in my yard for probably the last 8 years now.

The issue with it is that it's a biannual and the only place selling it online basically has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. I bought from them once and they sent me Watercress by mistake, yes that little invasive lawn weed with exploding seed pods everyone tries to get ride of... This place Sells that... to people... for money... and they pay them to do it apparently...

I called them about the mistake and they refused to help me until I had sent them pictures to prove they had made the mistake and then demanded the plants back at my cost! About a month later I received a trash bag in the mail of Fernleaf Phacelia roots that were lacking any green growth to them. This was in May so the plants had already flowered which they do at the end of their life cycle... So they sent me a bunch of dead plants.

So in order for me to obtain this species I have to drive to Native Plant Sales in Delaware and Pennsylvania (I'm in NJ) and hope they happen to be selling this species.

I fell in love with this stuff at the Mt. Cube Center in DE where it grows in huge abundance on some years. One time during their annual Wildflower Celebration I was telling one of the gardeners there I'm friendly with how I wish the species were more available to sale, especially in seed form. You'd think someone would sell it in seed form given that it's a biannual or at the very years recently germinated plugs. The Gardener couldn't believe no one was doing that and then told me, to my horror, that they actually cull the stuff there every few years! They fill up huge trash bags with it.... I wonder if that awful online nursery I bought from was stealing from their garbage?

Anyway, as you can see my efforts to get this plant started has come along. It's growing nicely beside some Jacob's Ladder. Several years of planting 1 quart sized pots of it have started something of a seed bank. The only thing holding it back now are the rabbits which have a real liking for the stuff. One year I had a great big plant growing a good 3' across and then the next day it had all been nibbled down into nothing.

Virginia Bluebells are another one that's supposed to spread like crazy. So far my plants have only enlarged in size each year. I'm not seeing any seedlings at all. It's another plant the gardeners at the Mt. Cuba Center occasionally have to weed out when they get too aggressive.

Woodland Poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum, has spread like a sort of weed though not in the direction I'd like it to. I stared with maybe 6 plants of this one year and they've spread quite a bit, but died out where I initially planted them. They seem to like growing away from other plants instead of next to them though I do like that they're spreading.

This species is also called the Caladine Poppy, but I hate this name because I have no idea what a Caladine is besides a different plant. Webster's Dictionary says it's basically a yellow flower scientifically known as Chelidonium majus, which is an invasive weed in America often mistaken for Stylophorum diphyllum. So it's common name refers to a species that it isn't... What? Is the dictionary wrong? It seems to be implying that the Calandine Poppy is the Calandine Poppy but not that Calandine Poppy, rather it's this Calandine Poppy over here.

If you google Calandine Poppy it certainly gives you Stylophorum diphyllum. So someone stole a name somewhere or is wrong.

The Eastern Redbuds in my yard are now all very well established and the perfect overlay to the ephemeral garden plants beneath them. Eventually the red/pink petals will drop from the tree and sprinkle the color to the display below. 

I had assumed the Spring Beauty, Claytonia , would be pinker before I planted it. That was the intent anyhow. I tried planting a pink flowering Phlox stolonifera which I read is aggressive spreading and one of the hardest phlox species to kill... well it died out.

Right now the only pink under the tree are the shriveled up petals Trillium pusillum. Interesting thing about this plant, I bought them from a nursery selling them as Trillium catesbaei. At least I think that was this nursery. I don't keep good records of all the plants I buy and from whom but given how much of this I have coming up, I would have had to have bought a flat of them. They've taken this long to ID because this is the first time one of them has flowered.

 Trillium viridescens, looking handsome as usual.

This is by far the most successful Trillium species in my yard. Each late afternoon they produce a faintly pungent scene of rotting apples and get swarmed by vinegar flies which transfer pollen from one flower to the other. They all started as just three plants, but that's become three large clumps of flowering stems with patches of seedlings all around them and then strays like the one photographed here coming up in other places.

 I'm gonna have to start giving them away as gifts.

More Jacob's Ladder doing well. I planted so much of this because I'd given up on Fernleaf Phacelia and wanted to move onto something easier to grow. Despite having such a good year with Phacelia, ultimately because it's a biannual I have no idea where it will come up next year, unless I collect seeds.

Round Leaf Ragwort. This would be having a good year but isn't. Basically the past two years, a female rabbit used the patch to have her babies in. She cleared out a nest in the middle. Then this year we got a puppy... (I'm amazed my Trilliums are holding up as well as they are.) She's has also decided to make this spot in the Ragwort patch her little spot to lay and chew things like plant stem. 

Trillium cuneatum growing beneath one of my few non native plants. The non native Bleeding heart was a mistake on my part. Back when I started gardening they were in the same genus as the native ones. So I have this gigantic bleeding heart plant I've started dividing and spreading about.

I didn't know Trillium cuneatum, was so amazingly fragrant until last year when a different one started flowering. While T. viridescens smells like rotting fruit, T. cuneatum is much more like fresh apples. Oddly though it doesn't seem to get anywhere near as many pollinators to it. I've yet to see anything land on them actually.

Another of what I'm calling T. cuneatum though I suspect one or the other is a different species. These are flowering for the first time and relatively short. They're newly planted this year so the stems might not be so short in future.

I have another one that's just as big as the red flowering one (two pictures up) but with flower petals in this shade. They all smell the same but that might be coincidence. We'll see what they do next year. 

There are Trillium species that remain this short though.

I've been finding Trillium growers (even reputable ones that don't steal from nature) have difficulty distinguishing some species apart. Lots of reasons for this. Growing them from seed they require 2 years to germinate, produce a single leaf of foliage for the next 2 to 3 years and then all look fairly identical until flowering. Take into account having to move flats around in a green house and it's easy to see over even just a 5 year period how things can get mixed around. Likewise Trilliums are prone to hybridizing with some frequency. 

Trillium luteum is another one I've had for a long time. They've mostly started to divide like my T. viridescens, but I've noticed when they do that they don't flower as much. I've never gotten them to produce seeds, nor seen anything visiting the flowers, even though they smell nice and lemony. Hopefully as the Trillium patches continue to grow in size I'll get more of the flies, beetles, and bees that pollinate them taking closer attention.

Red Trilliums I've been finding very tricky to ID. I'm going with T. vaseyi because that's what the nursery said they were, but I'm not certain how they ruled out, T. sulcatum, or T. erectum. Actually I can kind of see how it isn't T. erectum which I assume would have a larger flower with slightly longer petals. T. vaseyi and T. sulcatum seem to differ only in whether they stick the flower above or below the leaves. Mine just opened today so and have the flowers above the leaves suggesting T. sulcatum  ... but they might hang under the leaves in a day or two...

Whatever the case, I'm happy to see they're at least getting pollinated both by vinegar flies and some sort of pollen beetle.

 

 Maybe I should cave in and plant more tulips; no one cares what pollinates those.

Late Summer Mt. Cuba Center Visit

I was at the Mt. Cuba Center last weekend for a little late summer photo stroll. Here are a few of the sights I saw.

The round garden perhaps off from the main house is a dazzling array of color now, though perhaps a little busy for some. While it's comprised of mostly nonnative annuals, it serves as a bustling stop for an assortment of butterflies who's host plants are all around some ~650 acres of fairly well kept wilderness and native plant gardens. 

I'm not sure what the purple plant is but it's foliage contrasts well with the brightness of the Lantana in bloom among other flowering plants. Here some skippers flutter about. Among them were an assortment of Swallowtails, Monarchs, and Fritillary Butterflies that proved too quick for me to photograph. 

Elsewhere in a native flower bed the Swallowtails were a bit more cooperative. Here two Tigers sip at an Ironweed, I believe the cultivar is Vernonia angustifolia 'Plum Peachy' which is like 'Iron Butterfly' but about twice as tall. 

Praying Mantises were abound in the meadow garden. Not only were females laying eggs but also in the act of mating... some with more than one partner courting them at the same time. 

Though the woodland was filled with an assortment of Woodland Asters, I found the Richweed, Collinsonia canadensis, to be particularly interesting.

Though common in woodland areas across the eastern United States, it's not something a lot of people stop to look at.

Part of the issues that it's not a more mainstream plant is likely due to the large leaves of the plant, compared to the fairly delicate flower stalks that come above. The flowers are small and not entirely noticeable either. I actually walked past the patch of these plants twice before I even noticed it. It's plants like this where interesting leaves or flower shapes from cultivation would benefit to get it sold and brought into the main nursery trade.

The Mt. Cuba Center's 10th Annual Wildflower Celebration

Last Sunday the Mt. Cuba Center held their 10th annual Wildflower Celebration. This has truly become an event I've tried to attend every year ever since I learned about the place. The gardens there are spectacular as always, however because of the long winter we had I feel that the general peak bloom of the place was 2 or 3 weeks behind. 

Fern-leaf Phacelia, Phacelia bipinnatifida, had only just started to open. And even the May Apples which are very abundant in parts of the forests there weren't blooming yet.

I was slightly impressed to find a Toothwort, Cardamine concatenata, still blooming from two weeks ago when I had visited before for the early spring blooming tour. Other plants I saw then like Hepatica, and Bloodroot were pretty much completely done flowering for the year.

There were more Trout Lillies flowering but most were past their prime. Even so, the flowers were interesting and pretty to look at.

The White flowering species must have also flowered after my previous visit and had since faded on the day of the celebration. That's kind of the charm of going every year though. Some years there are carpets of flowers all over the place, and others it's little hints of wildflowers you might not have noticed.

A Rhododendron. Bumblebees were working this but refused to stand still long enough for me to get a good shot.

Dutchman's Breeches, Dicentra cucullaria, get their name from resembling pants.

Turkey Corn, Dicentra eximia, because they're not really heart shaped enough to call them bleeding hearts. 

Green and Gold, Dicentra eximia. This is one of those wildflowers native plant gardeners like to gush about. Honestly it's never impressed me, though I read it has a very long bloom time. Maybe I'll plant it someday.

Anemone sp. 

Fraser's Sedge, Cymophyllus fraserianus, a flowering sedge that actually has showy flowers.

Rue, I think. This is wind pollinated but you can still occasionally find bees going after the pollen.

The ponds were extremely abundant with tadpoles this year. There were spots with so many of them that you couldn't see the bottom of the pond. I'm told something like 5 species of frogs use their ponds as a spawning pool. None of which were added, they all showed up on their own. 

Marsh Marigold, Caltha palustris, was abundantly in bloom around their ponds. This was the first year I saw this plant blooming at it's peak and the nonnative they have there not. The Mt. Cuba Center isn't totally native, partly because of the former owner of the estate. Her name was Mrs. Copeland (hope I'm spelling that right,) and while she was devoted to creating a wonderful native plant garden, a few of her favorite nonnatives still grow in the gardens. She had a saying I'm told that went something like, "If it isn't native, then it ought to be."

So on most years I'd see Japanese Primroses, Primula japonica, all over the pond area adding some vibrant magenta and pinks to the color spectrum. I have to admit they are pretty plants but not fitting with the theme.

I've been meaning to add Marsh Marigold to my pond at home, which can grow is fairly flooded conditions.

Swamp Pink, Helonias bullata, an endangered species (though only threatened in some states) was just starting to bloom in patches here and there. This is a nice pop of color but doesn't spread enough to be productive in the horticultural industry.

The one nursery I knew that was able to germinate the seeds found that they require an exact amount of cold hours, nothing more and nothing less to get the seeds to this plant to germinate.

I'm not 100% sure but I think this is Bog Blueberry, Vaccinium uliginosum. This was a blueberry shrub they had planed right in the flood area of their ponds, along side pitcher plants and bog sage.

Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica. This was the main burst of color on the forest floor this year. It's a wonderful perennial that forms a deep tap root. Some have said it's hard to get rid of once established and does spread freely by seed. Honestly though the gardeners there seem to keep it under control. I'd say the Woodland Poppy spread way more prolifically.

This was one of the few plants that bumblebees were actively working. Here a young queen (they're all pretty much queens this early in the year) is gathering nectar from one.

This would have been fuller looking had they held the event in two or three weeks. The Virginia Bluebells are peaking right now, but mixed in here is all Fern-leaf Phacelia and Woodland Poppy, neither of which is really flowering heavily yet. 

When you have this many of the same species growing in such numbers, variations are bound to show up.

Normally the flowers open up in a tone of pink but quickly turn blue once they open fully. Here is an individual that seems to lack any pigment at all.

The flowers are simply white.

Likewise, these two plants by their pond never turned blue at all, and yet the flowers are fully opened.

Around the ponds there are small patches of lawn separated by moss patches. I'm told the gardeners use tweezers to maintain this boundary. I've come to find mossy patches are the ideal place to grow one wildflower in particular. 

Bluets, Houstonia caerulea.

These are also called Quaker Ladies, though I'm not sure why. Something to do with the plant being small and unassuming except when they bloom. The corms to these plants are about the same size as the flower, and yet each plant somehow pushes out 20 flowers all at once. The foliage is a simple rosette of leaves, but even then the flowers take up most of the mass of the plant.

They bloom so thick at times that they must shade out the leaves below, though I've never known this to be an issue with an ephemeral. Many of them will produce only a flower and then after it fades push out some leaves. 

I was happy to find the moss garden full of Bluets this year. In years past, I felt the population here may have been dying out.

Before I knew what a Bluet was, I honestly thought there was a patch of snow up on the hill for some reason. You almost want to dive in and make a snow angle. This year the effect was there, though shrubs planted right before the patch ruin the surprise.

Even here there are unique individuals growing. One plant (yes one plant makes that many flowers!) had only produced white flowers. It stood out in a sea of pale blue flowers.

Beeflies were buzzing about pollinating them. You can sort of see one here, though they zipped around mostly in the middle of the patch and they frown on walking into the garden beds. 

I tried to grow bluets once. They over wintered just fine, and flowered the following spring, however, come summer they died off sadly. I believe growing them in moss is somewhat vital to their survival as they are delicate little evergreen plants. Considering the size of their root they're probably not drought tolerant in the slightest.

But the real highlight of the Mt. Cuba Center in the spring time has got to be the Trilliums. Many people were passing them by unaware of the glory of these amazing plants.

For starters it's unusual for a native plant garden to not have at least one species. These take two years from seed to germinate, producing a simple single leaf on the third year and that's all. Year four they may produce two leaves, and then three leaves on the fifth. Then sometime between year six and ten, they should flower. From there they can slowly divide more flowering shoots to very slowly form a clump. They don't like fertilizer, even the slow release stuff will diminish the size of the rhizome or kill them. They like to grow in full shade, and can tolerate partial to full sun, provided they're watered regularly once a week. Lack of sufficient water (whether in full sun or shade) can cause the seed pod to shrivel up and die. Seeds are coated in elaiosome, which is basically ant food! So your seeds can walk away on you if you're not careful. So in summary these plants are tricky to grow and take the better half of a decade to flower.

Trillium grandiflorum is probably the most well know and beloved of the Trilliums. It's the provenance flower to parts of Canada, and illegal to pick or dig up there. You can still find nurseries selling them but expect to pay something around $10 to $20.

As a side note I had always wondered why the Mt. Cuba Center had a section called the Trillium Garden, when it's clear to anyone that they have more Trilliums planted in big patches elsewhere in the gardens. But then I realized, this is where they keep all the cultivars and hybrids that have popped up over the years.

Trillium grandiflorum 'Quicksilver' is fairly true to the true species, however it supposedly spreads faster than the true species.

I didn't get the name of this one but it opened slightly pink. Normally they turn pink and magenta after a week of flowering white. It's not a huge difference but still a note worthy one.

Another cultivar they had opened as a more striking magenta.

This one doesn't have any reproductive parts at all. The flower is useless but this plant is still able to spread by an expanding rhizome which even divides every few years. 

Trillium erectum is probably the prettiest of the red flowering species.

Despite it's beauty, the flower smells like a dead fish to attract flies and carrion beetles to pollinate it. Thankfully one has to practically put their nose inside the flower to observe this fact.

Trillium cernuum is a neat one on par with T. grandiflorum. The flower is a bit more open though.

Trillium catesbaei. This is truly one of the prettier species to have, but harder to grow. They don't divide too often and it's even more difficult to get them to reproduce by seed.

The flower opens white but later turns a sharp shade of pink. 

Trillium simile. This is actually my favorite Trillium. The flower is almost a perfect triangle. A life goal of mine is to someday commission a piece of jewelry in the shape of this flower. Not sure what it would be called but something to pin above a breast pocket on a suit, or cufflinks perhaps?

Elsewhere in the gardens there was a patch that had been flowering a little bit longer. You can tell from the developing seed pod.

I was also thrilled to find a mutation! This one has four petals instead of three!

Up in the Trillium garden they had a variety that has slightly yellow petals. (A crossed with T. luteum perhaps?)

Trillium flexipes x erectum, this was a neat one to see. The flower resembles that of T. flexipes while the color is more in line of T. erectum... I didn't think to check if it smelled of dead fish like T. erectum. But it seems to bloom when T. erectum does because I don't recall seeing any T. flexipes open.

Trillium sulcatum x flexipes. Another flexipes hybrid. 

Another hybrid with T. flexipes, though this time most of the reproductive parts and color seem to come from T. sulcatum.

Trillium underwoodii.

I believe this was the only patch of this species growing there. I like the darkness of the flower and earthy tone of the pollen.

A patch of Trillium sessile. (I know because I read the label.)

Trillium luteum. This species is one of the only yellow flowering ones. It also smells like oranges, very pleasant. This is another easy to grow species.

Outside of the gardens they had food and activities about up near the main house. They still had a trial of Heuchera's going on in their trial garden. I was handed a flag and asked to pick the best one. I was the first to vote for the cultivar 'Tiramisu' and later when I went back I saw it was actually winning of what had to bee some 50+ varieties. I picked it because the amber and purple foliage ones didn't appeal to me, and I didn't like the red or lime green ones, so I found one that was just green enough but also with just the right amount of copper in the leaves. There was another cultivar right next to it that barely had any copper in the leaves at all.

The Round Garden sits directly beside the house. Delphiniums and tulips were the biggest splashes of color here. It's a more formal garden and Mrs. Copeland was fond of Delphiniums so they plant them every year in her memory. I think it's lovely, but frankly if I lived there, that pond would be converted into a hot tub so fast!

Also planted in this garden are the more formal and garden friendly cultivars of native plants, most of which flower over the summer.

Bumblebees were working the Delphiniums. 

They once again held a raptor bird demonstration. I only caught the tail end of the show this year....

and so did this small child apparently.

Who survived!

They did this great thing this year where they asked for a young volunteer with a camera to take a seat right by the perch for the Turkey Vulture. He probably got an amazing photo too.

When not preforming, their birds were perched out for all to observe. I'm not really a bird person but I know this is a screech owl.

Peregrine Falcon? Some type of falcon?

A bird... (or plane) of some sort?

Red Tailed Hawk?