#17 Keeping Connecticut Natives Happy

A couple of weeks ago we attended the CMGA 2019 Master Gardener Symposium which draws gardeners from throughout Connecticut. We caught up with old garden friends, met some new garden friends and learned some new ideas. This year’s theme “Nature’s Creatures: Bring More Life to your Landscape” wasn’t necessarily new, but we took away some exciting new ideas. Today it is in vogue to talk about green – green living, native plants and protecting the pollinators. But, this year our speakers brought the idea of native back to Connecticut.

Bringing Nature Home

Keynote speaker Douglas Tallamy, Ph.D., author of Bringing Nature Home, a landmark book on the need to preserve native plants, talked about our landscape from the point of view of the chickadee, a native songbird. Wow! It’s almost as if he knew the chickadee was one of the madman’s favorite birds.

For years we have delighted in watching this small sociable bird flit throughout our yard without giving a thought to his needs. When we are in the yard, we often hear his “chick-a-dee-dee” song. When the madman fills the birdfeeder in the morning the chickadee cocks his head almost as if to say “it’s about time.” And, when we dine on the treehouse in the summer, we are usually visited by the chickadee and his friends coming for a drink from the ant moat of our hummingbird feeder.

Professor Tallamy, who is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, started us thinking about our chickadees and other feathered friends. They aren’t coming just because we hang out a birdfeeder filled with seed. Instead, they come because over the years we have maintained an environment that welcomes them.

What Brought us Here

We are never sure whether it was the house or the property that drew us here. The house was an early colonial that sat on four acres of woods, water, garden and lawn. The drive way cuts into a busy state highway. But, the minute we crossed the wooden bridge over the brook we fell in love with the place. There was a garden in front, woods in the back and a large lawn extending to the neighbor’s pond. As we got out of the car, we heard the songs of birds, not the sound of traffic. This was home.

Feeding the Birds

We didn’t know why the birds were around, but our first purchase was a birdfeeder we hung from a willow tree in the back yard. We took out a notebook and began recording the species of birds we saw in the yard. Looking back at that list we realize that the first bird notation we made was our future friend the chickadee. We kept track of the birds as they migrated, noting the first sightings of different species in the spring. Over the years we have begun to recognize the calls, so we sometimes know they are here because we simply hear them in the woods. And, all this time the madman thought it was the bird food that brought them. Didn’t realize that it was simply survival of the species.

Catering to Their Needs

In Professor Tallamy’s lecture, he explained that our bird friends need more than just a source of grain to exist in a habitat. They need a place to nest, cover from predators, water (something not too many people think about), and a good source of protein. In order to produce viable eggs and feed their young, chickadees and other birds need protein which is not available from bird seed. So where’s the protein?

The protein comes from the larvae of butterflies, moths, flies and other insects that have been around as long as the chickadees have been around. So, the madman says, no bugs no birds. Sounds like a cycle is starting to form. Where are the bugs? Caterpillars, the larvae of moths, butterflies, native bees and other insects, feed on the leaves of a variety of host plants. Some of the hosts are trees, some are shrubs, and some are called weeds.

Why Natives?

Now, here comes the native part. Native plants and wildlife have been evolving together for a very long time. Plants have natural chemical defenses to keep bugs from eating them, but because they evolved together, certain insects developed the specialized ability to eat certain plants. The evolution took tens of thousands of years. When the colonists came to America, they brought with them plants from Europe. When the Victorians wanted exotic decorative plants for their manicured gardens, they looked to Asia. Can anyone say “invasive species?”

Invaders are Moving In

Over the years our society has done a number on our native woodlands. American chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, and most recently the emerald ash borer are just a few of the problems we have created for ourselves. Large numbers of native trees, once important to our native ecosystem, no longer exist.  Because of this, the invasive Norway maple and others have been very happy to move in. Our forest edges are lined with invasives like phragmites, Japanese knotweed and oriental bittersweet. The problem is that the newer trees and shrubs (often referred to as aliens) do not support native species of wildlife.

The Green Lawn of Suburbia

The madman looks at friends in wonder as they tell him how they use a four-step process to maintain a green lawn. Because turf grass is not native to this area, it requires a lot of care – lots of chemicals are dumped onto it; then there is the mowing and watering and mowing and watering… Most growers of lawns don’t realize that the grasses they grow do well in cool wet weather, but when the weather turns hot and dry in the middle of summer these plants normally shut down. To get them to stay green, landowners use more fertilizer and more water. A green lawn has become a way of life in the suburbs.

We have a lawn, but the madman always felt that any color green or brown was okay. We needed the lawn when Chris and Mike were little; we played duck-duck-goose, baseball, football, soccer-we spent a lot of time out there. But, it took the madman 3 hours to mow it, so when the kids left home, he happily began to turn green “turf” into garden beds.

We Have Woods

Fortunately for the madman and his dislike of mowing, half of our property is woodlands. The back woods as he calls it requires little care. It also fits the criteria of the National Wildlife Federation’s “Certified Wildlife Habitat”. Not surprising, it contains all the things Professor Talamy was speaking about.

 It suddenly struck the madman why we have so many birds and other wildlife. They came for the food, but stayed because of the environment we have maintained. Our woods contains natives like oak, willow, maple, beech and birch. The understory is full of native spicebush, high bush blueberry, viburnum and others. Native flowers like meadowsweet, dogtooth violet and marsh marigolds join native ferns and mosses on the forest floor. A spring-fed stream feeds our neighbor’s pond.

A Non-native or Two is OK

 As we drove home talking about the value of having so many natives, I caught the madman glancing in the rear view mirror at the non-native Corylus x “Red Dragon” I had picked up at the seminar. I purchased this cultivar of Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick from Broken Arrow Nursery because of its resistance to Eastern Filbert Blight.  Before he pulled over to throw it out I remembered Dan Jafee’s lecture. Dan Jaffe is the Propagator and Stock Bed Grower at New England Wildflower Society (the Society’s Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA is a must stop on your garden visits this spring). Mr. Jaffe epitomizes all native gardening – his lawn even consists of native strawberries-but he does say that when thinking about the garden, you have to consider the gardener. The gardener is an important part of the ecosystem. His suggestion is to reserve a small part of the land for plants that make the gardener happy. Seeing the pollinators in the garden makes me happy, but so does Harry Lauder.

And cocoa.