It is shaping up to be a soggy Victoria Day weekend in Calgary and southern Alberta but that likely won’t stop a legion of hopeful green thumbs from descending on garden centres.
The May long weekend is often seen as the start of the growing season so we asked horticulturalist KathSmyth for some gardening advice at this time of year.
Kath Smyth is a horticulturist with the Calgary Horticultural Society. (Kath Smyth)
Q. What can you plant in your garden or pots right now?
I think the long weekend is a little early this year. That being said, there is much a person can do in the garden right now. Perennials (plants that come back every year) are acclimatized to our cooler temperatures. Many are starting to show. If you are still planning your garden, you can put your new perennials in containers. Try grouping different combinations (sun or shade) together. That way, you can see how they look before they go in the ground.
As for annuals, I think it’s still too early to plant. It’s just too cool at night for many of them.
There are some cold-hardy annuals that are safe to put in your garden or pots right now. Annuals such as pansies, violas, primulas, and snapdragons would add some much needed colour this weekend.
Visit the garden centres to see what is new this growing season. The staff will be more than ready for a planning session with you.
Q. What about shrubs?
Deciduous shrubs can be planted now (the ones that lose their leaves in the fall) as can coniferous (junipers, pines). I would not try to plant a tree right now because it would be hard to dig the larger hole required in the heavy, wet soil.
Another thing you could do is pull up dandelions and thistles while the soil is wet. You stand a good chance of getting the taproot out whole. In dry soil, it invariably snaps off and then re-grows. Act now before the flowers set seed.
And stir your compost bin! This is a great time to combine the wet and dry in your bin.
Q. What vegetable seeds can be planted at this time?
It is time to sow peas, lettuce, spinach and chard. Sweet peas love cool soil to start with so they will do well now. Do not bury seeds too deeply. The smaller the seed, the less soil needs to cover it. Read the instructions on the seed packet. Do not forget to label the rows. I use plastic knifes and write on the blade part. There are also transplants available now for cabbages, broccoli and kale that can be planted now.
Q. How can gardeners protect their new plants from heavy rain?
I have been known to use golf umbrellas to keep heavy rain from damaging my new plantings. I also will place cloches (transparent plant covers) over top to protect them.
One important tip: do not put saucers under your newly-planted pots. Turn the saucer upside down and stand the pot on them. That way, the soil does not become too saturated.
Q. What should you be doing now to prepare your lawn?
Don’t rake your grass now! Do it when it’s dry. Remove dead leaves and debris. We have seen a lot of snow mould this year. Be very careful when removing the mould. Wear a dust mask and gloves to take it off the lawn. A corn broom works well — but make sure you do not bring the broom into the house to use until you clean it off.
Q. Can you give us one good tip for a novice gardener in Calgary?
Beginner gardeners are often too ambitious. For instance, they think that they can grow an eggplant. To do so successfully takes a lot of husbandry and babysitting. But, for a first-time gardener, there is no reason why they can’t grow a tomato plant or a pepper plant, especially when we have our long, hot summers with our wide open days.
Another major problem in Calgary is that we have to pay attention to the fact that our nighttime temperatures drop rapidly. You have to be ready to do a little bit of “cold work”, meaning that you have to make sure your plants are reasonably sheltered and protected. But really, the best thing to do is just stick to the basics when you first start out.
Kath Smyth teaches gardening through the Calgary Horticultural Society. For more information about classes, go to https://www.calhort.org.
Last weekend, I took advantage of the weather to prune my forsythia that was crowding plants. I hadn’t pruned it much for the past two years, and it was becoming unruly. It put on a beautiful show of blooms this spring, but I knew that if I didn’t remove some of the old wood, it probably would not have as many flowers next year.
My approach was to remove one-third to one-fourth of the older (thickest stems with side shoots) stems down to the ground. A healthy forsythia is a vigorous shrub that sends up new stems each year that bloom the following spring. Removal of the oldest stems should be done after flowering because the buds for next spring are formed on the new wood by early summer. Pruning later in the season or in winter will reduce the flower display the following year.
A weigela was one of the plants being crowded by the forsythia. I planted it in early summer two years ago, and initially it benefitted from the shade the forsythia provided, but now it needs more light. I also have two mature weigela shrubs elsewhere in my landscape.
One of these weigelas is Wine and Roses, with dark burgundy leaves and dark pink flowers. It has prospered, but now it has become bedraggled, and there are dead twigs and branches throughout. Since weigelas are prone to winter dieback, this may have been caused by the cold snap last fall. The dieback could also be related to the increasing amount of shade provided by two trees on that side of the yard. Weigelas do best in full sun and will become straggly if planted in shade or crowded by other plants.
Perhaps I should remove it and plant a more shade tolerant shrub, but I think I will see if I can revitalize it first. As soon as it is finished blooming, I will prune out the thickest, oldest stems along with any of dead branches and twigs. To shape it, I will prune back any overly long stems to a side branch, being sure not to remove more than one-third of the stem.
Most other multistemmed spring-flowering deciduous shrubs are also pruned after flowering. This is because they too flower on wood produced the previous growing season. These shrubs include forsythia, weigela, lilac, viburnum, honeysuckle, mock orange, Nanking cherry, flowering quince, white-flowered spireas, beautybush and deutzia.
Also, don’t forget to deadhead the spent flowers or seed-heads from the stems you don’t remove. This will give the shrub a tidier appearance and allow its energy to go into plant growth rather than seed development.
— Marianne C. Ophardt is a horticulturist for Washington State University Benton County Extension.
How can you get the most yield from a garden where space is limited, and water is too?
Plant smart, and pay attention to the soil.
“Your garden is only as good as your soil,” says David Salman, chief horticulturist at High Country Gardens, a Santa Fe, New Mexico, catalog that specializes in native and low-water plants.
Find out what nutrients your soil has — and what it’s missing — with a soil test, available through local cooperative extension offices at a nominal fee (home soil-test kits are less reliable, according to the Colorado State University Extension).
Encourage plant health by fertilizing with natural, organic fertilizers, which include fish emulsion and liquid seaweed, says Salman. Limit the use of chemical fertilizers because they don’t help build the soil.
“You will have more nutritionally complete vegetables if you have healthy soil,” he promises.
One trick Salmon recommends, especially for gardeners living in new housing developments, is adding a soil inoculant called mycorrhiza, a beneficial fungi. It’s found naturally in healthy soil, but often needs to be added to a new garden.
“New gardens in new subdivisions, their soil is scraped off as part of construction,” says Salman. “You need to put beneficial fungi back in.”
Peas, beans and soybeans could benefit from legume inoculants, which are species-specific (a soybean inoculant cannot be used to improve peas’ growth). Read product labels carefully or ask your gardening center for assistance.
“Your beans will do OK [without it], but if you really want to crank out the beans, you can do that with the inoculant,” says Salman. “It’s kind of a ‘grandma’s secret’ to growing great beans.”
Plants that can offer high yields with low watering include leafy vegetables such as kale, lettuce and spinach; beans, snow peas and sugar snap peas; and some varieties of cucumbers and squash, he says. Plant vining beans and peas if you have space or can grow them up a fence or trellis; plant bush beans and peas in large pots if space is limited.
Sarah J. Browning, an extension educator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, suggests planting radishes, carrots, peppers, zucchini and summer squash for summertime bounty. Peppers grow well in dry conditions, says Browning, and root crops don’t need frequent watering.
“If you watered them well and then mulched them, I think you could get a crop with fairly small amounts of water input,” she says.
Plant radishes early in the season or in part shade, and mulch them and other plants to retain moisture and combat weeds.
Browning recommends the cherry tomato cultivar Sun Gold and the slicers Big Beef and Celebrity as great-tasting high producers. Also look for disease-resistant tomato varieties, which are easier to grow. Browning refers tomato lovers to Pennsylvania State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences Extension’s “Tomato Report 2011,” which lists the best varieties in its tomato trials.
Melissa Ozawa, a features editor for gardening at Martha Stewart Living magazine, recommends growing okra and Swiss chard; both are heat- and drought-tolerant. Melons also can handle less water once established because of their deep root systems, she says.
Not all vegetables grow well in all regions, so read seed packets, matching days to maturation to your region’s growing season, Salman advises.
“One of the big problems with horticulture in this country is everyone tries to be one-size-fits-all, and this is just too big of a continent to do that,” he says. “You don’t want to grow a 120-day watermelon in Denver. They can grow those in Texas, but the maturation period in Denver is much shorter.”
Prolific, water-wise herbs include basil, oregano, parsley, thyme and rosemary, says Browning.
Salman offers space-saving planting tips for herbs: Plant lavender and oregano along the dryer edges of your garden, since they’re the most heat-tolerant, and plant Greek oregano and dill, plus annual herbs such as basil and cilantro, among the root vegetables.
Try growing perennials such as rosemary, English thyme, tarragon and lavender in your ornamental beds. They don’t require your vegetable garden’s mineral-rich soil, says Salman.
Drought-tolerant flower varieties include coneflowers, hummingbird mint, salvia and blanket flowers, according to Ozawa. Other cutting-garden winners are cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers and larkspur, says Salman. His favorite late-season bloomer is the Mexican sunflower.
“If there’s a bee or butterfly in a 10-mile radius, they’ll find that Mexican sunflower,” he says.
Houston’s historical timeline is typically highlighted with the Allen brothers’ founding of the city in 1836, oil booms and busts, NASA and the rise of a glitzy skyline that sparkles over once-muddy streets.
A new exhibit will take a different path to connect past and present with a look at private and public gardens.
“Gardens always reflect the time,” says architect Kathleen English, whose idea sparked “Garden Architecture: Design and Placemaking in the Bayou City,” at Architecture Center Houston. The exhibit, which opens with a reception 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, will include images and stories of historical gardens, a juried presentation of recent public and private garden design and a McDugald Steele-designed vignette.
“The purpose of the exhibit is to celebrate gardens in and of themselves, not just as enhancements to buildings, but to make place,” she says.
An obvious milestone is the 14-acre formal and informal woodlands at Bayou Bend, the Latin Colonial home of the late philanthropist and garden visionary Ima Hogg. The now-public Southern garden showcases native and adapted plants such as azaleas, camellias and crape myrtles, as well as elegant design, which exemplifies the country house movement popular in late-19th and early-20th-century America. Take away the house at Bayou Bend, and the garden stands as a beautiful example of place-making, English says.
“Bayou Bend is Houston’s defining landscape. Yet Houston has much deeper history of gardens, much more compelling than people may realize. I’m excited the exhibit will bring breadth, visually, and look at how things have changed.”
Yes, Houstonians are still swatting mosquitoes and battling weather extremes. But gardens have come a long way since early travelers first admired the magnolias, oaks, sycamores and other native flora along Buffalo Bayou and the wildflower-bejeweled grasslands of the coastal prairies.
To grasp the first 100 years of that story, exhibit committee members Barry Moore, Jim Patterson, Lynn Herbert and Robyn Franklin plumbed multiple sources, including the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.
Growing food to put on the table was the primary focus after the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, says Moore, an architect.
While home-grown vegetables and fruits were still a necessity in 1845, ornamentals began to appear in the new town’s gardens. Paperwhites bloomed along the front picket fence at the Thomas William House Sr. residence at Smith and Capitol. By the time Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted visited in 1854, oranges, peaches, figs, bananas, oleanders and lantana were among the non-natives growing in local gardens.
As in other parts of the country, ornamental gardening ramped up during the plant-crazed Victorian era, and people of means decorated with trees, shrubs and showy blooms. New city utilities were the end of privies and woodpiles, which allowed more space for geometrically shaped beds of colorful blooms and foliage. By 1890, Houston’s premiere mansions and gardens lined Main Street between Capitol and Calhoun, Moore notes.
English immigrant Alfred J. Whitaker and other early nurserymen helped supply enthusiastic gardeners’ demands. Saburo Arai’s Japanese nursery stocked native plants and imports such as azaleas, camellias and waxleaf ligustrum, a handsome evergreen maligned today.
None were more influential than nurseryman Edward Teas, who landscaped the Rice Institute in 1911 and planted the magnificent live oaks that canopy Main Street today.
While researching the exhibit, Moore discovered three major ideas influencing home garden design at the turn of the century: house and garden integrated for living, a particular style for both and the suggestion of country living. A prime example: Inglenook, Henry Kirby’s place at Smith and Gray, and Houston’s first professionally designed, fashionably Italian-influenced private garden.
While Houston grew, and private gardens became more diverse, public green spaces came on the scene with Whitaker’s 1871 vow to create a rural cemetery park. Glenwood Cemetery became Houston’s first professionally designed public space – a scenic, wooded site meant not only for paying respects but also for picnicking and enjoying nature.
By 1900, Houstonians were using the bandstand, pavilion and arbor, and playground in Sam Houston Park, the city’s first public park. The downtown space remains a popular site for festivals and concerts.
By 1914, Houston had its beloved Hermann Park. This year’s 100th-anniversary celebration includes the opening of McGovern Centennial Gardens, 15 acres of diverse landscapes.
“The gardens have elements that link directly to history, such as the formal allée, but it is distinctly contemporary,” says Doug Hoerr of Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, the firm that designed the new garden. White Oak Studio collaborated on the project.
“Public parks performed such a different function 100 years ago from what they do today, partly because the concept of gardening has changed so much. Then, it was mostly the wealthy who could afford gardens, and the public park was where people went to see exuberant flowering displays, enjoy social time walking the promenade and get away from the density of the city.
“The design of the Centennial Gardens was driven by that fact – it is designed to be a place where people can see new ideas, learn about how to use plants and adapt that knowledge to their own gardens.”
As the city’s density increases, and private spaces are squeezed into smaller plots, public green areas are on the rise again.
Buffalo Bayou Park, a 2.3-mile stretch of green belt between Shepherd and Sabine, is being transformed into a gem, not only with more amenities for users, but also with an emphasis on restoring and preserving landscapes that were altered during the years.
Houston Arboretum and Nature Center, in the southwest corner of Memorial Park, anticipates a new master-planned look after the 2011 drought.
Today, Houston is bursting with garden clubs, plant societies and nurseries that share the tools and know-how to again grow food at home, plant wildlife habitats and try the latest cultivars.Imaginative individual gardens thrive, new place-makers in a sprawling city landscape.
How do you make a space more livable by current standards, while simultaneously upholding the original architect’s design intentions? It’s a delicate endeavor, but one that was recently accomplished by a couple of architects in Southern California. Originally published by AIArchitect as “Pacific Coast Sun Rises on Modernist House Restorations,” this article investigates the thoughtful restorations of three homes designed by the pioneering modernists Rudolph Schindler, John Lautner, and Charles and Ray Eames.
Los Angeles’ early Modernist pioneers are no longer around to oversee the restoration of homes they designed more than a half-century ago, but their landmark projects are offering a new generation of designers historic case studies in Modernist preservation that grow more and more significant with each passing day. Vintage architectural renderings and drawings, photos, and notes are all ingredients these architects use to summon the spirits of Rudolph Schindler, John Lautner, and Charles and Ray Eames, to name a few, bringing their early works of California Modernism back to life.
Channeling Rudolf Schindler in Inglewood
“We channeled Rudolf Schindler, asking what he would have done today,” says Steve Ehrlich, FAIA, founding principal of Ehrlich Architects, about his approach to the adaptive reuse of a 1938 Schindler-designedhouse in Inglewood, Calif., about four miles from Los Angeles International Airport.
Empty for two years, the two-bedroom, 981-square-foot house was in poor shape when Ehrlich purchased the home in 2009 and restored it to be purchased by his daughter and her family the following year. “The building had no landmark protection status. It could have been knocked down in a second,” Ehrlich says.
A flat-roofed single-story box with large panels of glass, the home was retooled for today with a more open floor plan that connects the kitchen to the living area, modern energy-efficient lighting, new insulation, tempered glass, a new rooftop HVAC unit, a new kitchen, and a new bath. Metal caps that had been added over the years to exterior stucco walls to keep the rain out were replaced with invisible waterproofing membranes, recapturing Schindler’s crisp wall-to-roof lines.
At the same time, conservation measures included refinishing cabinetry to its original color, replacing heavily damaged flooring with exactly the same width of wood and species of oak as the original, preserving the wooden windows and door frames, and replicating the original baseboards. The meticulously restored original brick and plaster fireplace once again serves as the natural focal point of the living room.
“We could have restored it as how it was built in 1938, or we could adapt it to the needs of a family of today,” Ehrlich says. “We chose the latter.”
The single-story plaster-façade house has a matching Schindler-designed neighbor next door. While Ehrlich didn’t restore that Schindler-built house, he ripped out the non-sustainable front lawn in between the two houses and installed zeroscape landscaping.
“A communal meeting area in the front of the house harkens back to some of Schindler’s early ideas he developed about communal living in his Kings Road House in West Hollywood,” Ehrlich says. “I think Kings Road is the ‘big bang’ of Modern architecture. I’ve looked at the work of Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra all around that period of 1920 to 1922, and if you look at the Kings Road House, I think you’ll see it was a watershed moment because it’s so original, so magnificent in every way. His connection to the outdoors, the tilt-up concrete panels, the wood windows and doors, [and] the sleeping porches were all way ahead of their time. Schindler was never properly recognized until after his death.”
Ehrlich pays homage to Kings Road in the backyard of the house, where he designed a galvanized steel trellis inspired by the sleeping porches of Schindler’s 1922 Kings Road masterwork.
Bringing back the Chemosphere better than new
“Are you interested in restoring the Chemosphere?” German publisher Benedikt Taschen asked Frank Escher as they drove through the Hollywood Hills in 1988.
Swerving along Mulholland Drive atop the Santa Monica Mountains, they approached one of the world’s most recognizable works of mid-century architecture—a concrete, wood, and glass octagonal house perched atop a 29-foot-high column like a UFO on a stick.
“When we arrived up to the house, I started to point to things,” Escher recalled. “The house had had several owners, and they all had done unspeakable things. It was in very sad shape. It looked a little bit like a rundown motel room. I have to give Benedikt Taschen a huge amount of credit to see past this layer of visual noise and see what the house actually was about. Mr. Taschen turned to me and said, ‘Mr. Escher, why don’t you do what you think is right?’”
For Escher, doing what’s right meant a return to Lautner’s drawings. “Wherever we could, we would go back to the original drawings and use that as a guide. We consulted with the project architect at the time. We consulted with Leonard Malin, the original client,” says Escher.
The house was designed in 1960 for Malin, a young aerospace engineer who was able to secure funding from sponsorships by companies such as Chem Seal, which provided experimental coatings and was rewarded with the building’s name.
But the renovation was never as simple as literally restoring the house’s earliest pristine condition. Various cost-cutting measures snuck into the building’s original construction, which diverged from Lautner’s specifications. “The house had a very small tiled floor, a dirty yellow tile. It sort of looked like a public men’s room, and Lautner never really liked that,” says Escher. “What Lautner had wanted to do was install a broken slate floor. So we installed a pattern of very thin cut slate to reference Lautner’s original idea and also give it a more contemporary manifestation. We installed wood paneling that connected the kitchen to the living room. On drawings, it was shown as a paneled wall, but it was constructed originally as only drywall. We used frameless glass everywhere, which Lautner did later in his career when he revisited his houses.”
Charles and Ray Eames House: A forensic restoration
Unlike the Chemosphere, which strayed from its architect’s original design vision as soon as it was complete, the Eames House and Studio was meticulously built to the architectural specifications of Charles and Ray Eames, two of the most celebrated designers of the 20th century. They lived there from 1949, when their house was built, until their respective deaths (Charles in 1978, Ray 10 years later).
The Eames House. Image Courtesy of Eames Office
Restoration began in 2011 after conservators from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art cataloged the living room’s 1,864 items and transported them across town for installation in a full-scale replica of the 17-foot-high living room for the exhibit California Design 1930–1965: “Living In A Modern Way.”While the house was empty, the Eames Foundation hired Escher GuneWardena Architecture to manage restoration of flooring, wall surfaces, and other projects, with the mission of taking the house back to its condition in 1988, when Ray last lived there. At the same time, the Getty Conservation Institute began its Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative and made the Eames House its first conservation project. “We got to work with some really amazing people, people who normally deal with Egyptian tombs and painted caves in China,” says Escher.
Climate measurement data was gathered inside and outside the house for an entire year. Keepers of the house now follow a protocol for which windows, curtains, and doors to open and close at each time of the day. “Introducing a sealed climate system was not a good idea, as it is completely contrary to the Eames’ idea [of] having a house that is operable, where you could open things up and look out, move out to the garden, and then move back,” says Escher.
“The [idea of a] window as a transparency, but also the window as something that could be removed and have contact with the outside was part of the DNA of Modernism,” says Theodore Prudon, FAIA, president of DOCOMOMO US. “In early Modernist thinking, light and air is very critical. A lot of buildings and thinking went into creating free air, ultraviolet light, open windows. The Eames House is interesting for the role of the [eucalyptus] trees in the shading of the house, the role of the windows, the role of the two-story space with the windows on the top that are able to ventilate out the hot air. There was a lot of thinking that went into the design from an environmental point of view.”
FRYEBURG — If you’re ready to tackle that remodeling project, start a garden or make your home more energy-efficient, the place to start is the Northern New England Home, Garden, Flower Show, taking place May 16-18 at the Fryeburg Fairgrounds.
Garden centers, garden artisans, beautiful landscape displays, seminars and demonstrations, good friends and delicious food makes this three-day event a great way to kick off summer in New England. This is the 13th year of the home show, which has twice been chosen by Yankee Magazine as a top-20 event in Maine. Last year more than 11,000 people attended the three-day event. Some 8,200 square feet of exhibit space has been added this year. The show will encompass a total of seven buildings at the fairgrounds, and over five acres of outdoor displays. Exhibitors include experts in all aspects gardening, landscaping and home improvements. The show is an opportunity to shop for ideas, and for the materials you need to bring those ideas to fruition. There is a food component to the show as well. The popular Meet the Chefs Cooking Series, presented by Bridgton Hospital, returns to Expo 1, with award-winning chefs from the region sharing healthy and delicious recipes for the entire family. Crafters and artisans round out the show, creating unique accessories for your home and garden, craft baskets, hand-made jewelry, dried floral wreaths and more. “We have assembled a unique mix of quality exhibitors, speakers, artists, crafters and breathtaking landscape displays,” says Karla Ficker, producer of Northern New England Home, Garden, Flower Show. “Our exhibitors are here to help enlighten attendees to the newest energy-saving products on the market, others to showcase their amazing talent in landscape and garden expertise. If it is information you are seeking, plants or veggie seedlings to purchase, great garden crafts, or you just want a fun way to spend a spring weekend, this event should be high on your weekend schedule.” Activities for the kids will be taking place Saturday and Sunday. Youngsters can learn how to plant their first garden, starting with preparing the soil. “By starting small they will develop a deep respect for the earth,” says Ficker. “It’s a magic time for them. There will also be an opportunity to meet author John Shelley who will be doing a book reading from ‘The Adventures of Snitch The Fracoon.’ Children will enjoy meeting Snitch the Fracoon and have their pictures taken too.” The show’s “All Things Growing” series, presented by the Maine Landscape and Nurseryman’s Association, offers seminars and demonstrations throughout the weekend. Paul Parent, host of the popular Paul Parent Gardening Club talk radio show, will be on hand, and he will host his show live from the fairgrounds on Sunday, May 18, from 6 to 10 a.m. The home show got under way Friday. Hours for the weekend are Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $9 for adults, $4 for ages 6-16 and free for children under 6. More information is available on the website, www.homegardenflowershow.com, or on Facebook, www.facebook.com/fryeburgshow. Or call (800) 359-2033.
Meet the world’s biggest bird lover: Ernesto Pulido, post office tree trimmer.
A week ago, Pulido was at the center of a federal investigation – and the object of vast public scorn – for allegedly allowing his workers to feed baby night herons through a wood chipper and injuring other baby birds while trimming trees outside a post office in downtown Oakland.
But Thursday a different side to him emerged. U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigators cleared him of the wood-chipper charges, and he paid a visit to the wildlife center in Fairfield that’s treating the baby birds harmed in the tree-trimming incident.
“Every single one of us should be more educated about birds,” Pulido said, as he toured International Bird Rescue. “People just aren’t educated about animals. They don’t know. That includes me.”
The tree-trimming incident occurred May 3 at 13th and Alice streets, where the U.S. Postal Service hired Pulido to cut back city-owned ficus trees that housed hundreds of nesting night herons and egrets, which are protected by the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The trees overhang a parking lot, and the birds were defecating on the mail trucks, postal officials said.
Witnesses reported seeing nest-laden branches fed into a wood chipper, and baby birds plummeting to the ground. Five of those birds ended up at International Bird Rescue, where they’ve been undergoing treatment for bruises and fractures.
$2,700 for bird care
Pulido, a Bay Point resident, offered to pay $2,700 toward the birds’ care: the $2,200 he earned from the U.S. Postal Service for the tree-trimming job plus an additional $500. He’s already paid the $500 and is awaiting payment from the post office to pay the rest, said International Bird Rescue spokesman Andrew Harmon.
But that wasn’t enough for Pulido. He wanted to learn more about night herons, what the center does to save them and what the public can do to help.
He was full of questions Thursday. What’s the likelihood the injured birds will survive? How long can they live in a city? What’s the difference between “endangered” and “protected”?
Questions answered
He got those answers (very high; many years; and “protected” applies to all native birds, not just the scarce ones) and much more. He saw volunteers checking the herons’ feathers, he saw herons learning to fly, and he learned about the great tragedy of baby herons’ tendency to shove their siblings out of the nest.
Center manager Michelle Bellizzi also gave him a stern lesson on when to trim trees: winter only.
“If you want to discourage birds from nesting, trim the bejesus out of your trees in the winter,” she said. “That way it’ll be a real unattractive place for them in the springtime and they’ll go somewhere else.”
Ideas for Oakland
Everyone agreed Oakland should install signs educating the public about the bird rookeries downtown. If the city is lucky enough to have protected birds nesting on city streets, it should inform residents about how best to live with the feathered squawkers.
Fish and Wildlife has not yet concluded its investigation, but Pulido’s bird campaign is just getting started.
He said everyone who criticized him for the tree-trimming fiasco should donate money or volunteer at wildlife rescue organizations. He was so impressed with International Bird Rescue he even offered his landscaping services.
“We just might take you up on that,” Harmon said.
Carolyn Jones is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: carolynjones@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynajones
Plants are popping out of the ground these days thanks to the warm temperatures and lots of rain. It’s time to get ahead of weeds before they overwhelm perennials and all those annuals you are about to plant.
Maple seedlings are in abundance this year and should be removed promptly. They grow amazingly fast into 6-foot trees. Chickweed has been blooming merrily and crabgrass is about to germinate in all the bare spots in lawns and garden beds.
Hand-weeding is much preferable to toxic poisons and this means you need good weeding tools. My favorite three-pronged weeder has gone missing and I must replace it at the garden center. The substitute I’ve been using just isn’t satisfactory. Many gardeners love the sharp-edged triangular Ho-Mi Korean weeder, which can be quite lethal so watch out when using it. A dandelion digger is great for garden beds as well as for lawns. A friend gave me a long-handled knife-like tool for use in between paving stones, bricks and cobblestones. You still have to get down on the ground to remove the weeds but the knife slices through the roots quickly. Vegetable gardeners can rely on a variety of hoes but they are seldom helpful in a perennial flower garden where plants are close together in haphazard patterns.
Mulch is the ultimate defense against weeds. It also holds moisture in the soil, a boon during dry spells. Wood chips around trees and shrubs are a great idea. Just be sure never to create “volcanoes,” those cone-shaped piles around tree trunks. Keep the mulch several inches from the trunk to avoid harboring diseases and insect pests. Mulch makes gardens look neat but the downside in perennial beds is that desirable self-sown flower seeds won’t germinate. You have to decide whether to reduce weeding and help retain moisture or provide a hospitable environment for forget-me-nots and little bulbs. Vegetable gardeners don’t face that dilemma. Straw — not hay, which has too many weed seeds — or grass clippings are great for vegetable gardens. That is assuming you never use pesticides on your lawn.
Get all those plants you bought at local nonprofit plant sales into the ground as quickly as possible and start a weeding routine for all your gardens. Gardening season has finally arrived and we need to keep ahead of Mother Nature.
NATIVE BEE POLLINATORS: Learn about essential native bees who pollinate food and ornamental plants on a walk at the Hitchcock Center in Amherst tomorrow, from 10 a.m. to noon. Joan Milam, a research associate at UMass, will lead the walk. Suggested donation, $5. Register by calling 256-6006.
BOREAL FOREST WALK: Aimee Gelinas will lead a spring ephemeral boreal plant and tree walk at Tamarack Hollow in Windsor tomorrow, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., under the auspices of Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary. Fee is $16. Call 584-3009 to register.
NATIVE WOODLAND PLANTS: Learn about native medicinal plants on an herb walk on Skinner Mountain Tuesday, 6-7 p.m. Herbalist Brittany Wood Nickerson will lead the walk. Meet at the main entrance to Skinner State Park off Route 47. Suggested donation, $10.
PLANT EXCHANGE: The Belchertown plant exchange is Tuesday, at 6 p.m., at 253 Warren Wright Road in Belchertown. Elaine Williamson organizes this twice-monthly exchange. Bring perennial divisions, seedlings, seeds and a box to take home your treasures. Fee is $2.
WILDFLOWERS: Uncommon ferns, yellow lady’s slippers and pitcher plants will be among the wildflowers expected to be seen on a hike at High Ledges in Shelburne on Wednesday, from 9 a.m. to noon. Botanists Janet Bissell and Connie Parks will lead the walk for Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary. Bring a hand lens and field guide if possible and be prepared for ticks. Fee is $8. Register at Arcadia, 584-3009.
GARDENING WITH MUSHROOMS: Fungi Ally will hold a workshop on growing mushrooms on May 24, 1-4 p.m., at Hacker Farm, 141 Franklin St., Belchertown. Fee, $30. Participants will take home a log inoculated with mushroom spores. Register at http://fungially.com/workshops/ or call Willie Crosby contact at 978-844-1811 or fungially@gmail.com.
PLANT SALES: Here is a list of plant sales scheduled in the next month. Visit as many as you can!
∎ May 17: Easthampton: Pascommuck Conservation Trust, 8 a.m. to noon, Big E’s Foodland parking lot. Perennials, ornamental grasses, shrubs, garden stepping stones, bird houses and a raffle of wicker rocking chair with gardening items. All proceeds benefit the trust, which is dedicated to land preservation and trail building; Easthampton Garden Club, 8 a.m. to noon, Emily Williston Library, 9 Park St., 527-1031. Holyoke: Wistariahurst Museum, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the museum, 238 Cabot St., 322-5660. Pelham: Pelham Library, 9 a.m. to noon, the library at the corner of Amherst and South Valley roads. Perennials, annual seedlings and vegetable starts. Benefits library programs. Shelburne Falls: Bridge of Flowers, 9 a.m. to noon, Trinity Church Baptist at the corner of Water and Main streets. Proceeds fund Bridge of Flowers maintenance. South Hadley: Council on Aging, 9 a.m. to noon, South Hadley Senior Center, 45 Dayton St. Soil testing and garden advice available from master gardeners; Mount Holyoke College Talbott Arboretum, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Benefits purchases for the greenhouse and campus grounds. (Sale also on May 24.) Southampton: Southampton Woman’s Club Anita Smith Memorial Plant Sale, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Conant Park. Locally grown plants at reasonable prices. Sunderland: Sunderland Public Library, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Graves Memorial Library at the corner of School and North Main streets. Plant donations accepted there on Friday.
∎ May 24: Amherst: 4-H plant sale, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Amherst Farmers Supply, 320 S. Pleasant St. Hanging plants, patio pots, vegetable plants, flowering plants, herbs and perennials. Leverett: Leverett Historical Society’s Plant and Garden Book Sale, 9 a.m. to noon, Leverett Town Hall. To donate plants or books or to help, contact Dawn Marvin Ward at 367-9562 or Julie at 367-2656. South Hadley: Mount Holyoke College Talbott Arboretum, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Benefits purchases for the greenhouse and campus grounds.
∎ May 31: Amherst: Grace Episcopal Church, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., on the Town Common. Plants, including house plants, garden tools, decorative pots and books. Proceeds finance landscaping at the church. To donate plants call the church office at 256-6754.
Take a self-paced tour of seven of Webster Groves’ enchanting private gardens and its brand new sculpture park at the Secret Gardens of Webster Groves Tour on Sunday, June 1, noon to 4 p.m.
Tickets are $15 in advance and can be purchased at Rolling Ridge Nursery, Mac Hardware, Webster Groves Bookshop and Straub’s Webster Groves location. Tickets are $20 the day of the tour and can be purchased at the Webster Groves Sculpture Garden at Kirkham and Gore avenues.
For more information or to purchase advance tickets online, visit www.wghsparentsclub.org or call Lynda Brady at 740-2590.
Woody and Winding, 477 Hawthorne: The au naturel feel of this fairy tale woodland-style garden with plenty of color is enchanting.
Color Me Pretty, 429 Sherwood: This white stucco home on a well-known bend of Lockwood gets a flush of color from annuals, perennials and an expansive azalea garden dating to the 1950s.
advertisementA Touch of New, A Touch of Old, 164 Plant: Updated landscaping mixes with architectural treasures from an era past on the grounds of this 1889 home.
It’s a Secret, 55 Marshall Place: This home truly does have a secret garden -– the owner’s personal Zen garden. Shh, not to disturb the reclining Buddha. The gardens were designed to be four-season gardens.
Lawn Free, 215 E. Swon: These organic gardeners appreciate food in an intimate way – right outside their front door. They replaced their front lawn with raised beds and hardy plants including a Hawthorne tree, indigenous grasses, roses and hardwood peonies.
Perennially Happy, 21 W. Cedar: This garden features perennials for a variety of conditions and caters to the resident honeybees. It attracts birds, butterflies and the many insects that promote a healthy, happy ecosystem.
Southern Style, 46 Marshall Place: Every bit of space is used to create a large, lush southern-like garden. “Evelyn,” the variety used by Crabtree and Evelyn, and other climbing roses surround a fanciful backyard folly and Victorian porches.
Form Meets Flowers: This newly completed land wedge at Kirkham and Gore avenue is the crown jewel in the Webster Groves park system. Five pieces of outdoor sculpture exist in unusual harmony with a garden-like landscape.
