Red House Garden

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

How to Design Your Very Own Halloween Garden

This just in, dear readers - ghastly gardens are all the rage this time of year! I know what you're thinking: how can I design my very own spooky garden space? Well, never fear! Here are some tips to make your garden into a fabulously ominous space that no one will want to go into!

The first tip when designing a garden is to decide what the 'bones' of the garden are going to be.

photo source - Wikipedia

Er, uh, wrong type of bones (though a skeleton would make for some wonderfully dreadful garden art...)

I was actually referring to the large, permanent plantings that give structure to the garden, such as trees and shrubs. In your Halloween garden, you definitely want trees that give the most unwelcoming impression possible.

Chorisia speciosa (pictured above) is a delightful tree for your very own spooky retreat. Trees that twist and gnarl are also acceptable - bonus points if the ones in your garden look like the evil trees from 'Wizard of Oz'!

For those of you in the Northeast that just lost a bunch of trees in the storm, you are in luck - nothing says 'Stay Away' better than a snarled bunch of downed trees littering up the yard!

In selecting shrubs for your creepy garden, think thorns. Buckthorns, Roses (blood-red, of course!), Flowering Quince, and Ocotillo are but a few of the options available.

the fabulously razor-sharp thorns of Ocotillo

If those look too friendly for your taste, one can always use a nice, prickly cactus. In fact, a whole yard full of cacti would be spectacularly spooky - and the neighborhood children's worse nightmare!

After you have found the most dreadful trees and shrubs possible, it is time to work on the next layer of your extra-special, gruesome garden - flowers. I particularly like those that look like eyeballs.

Actaea pachypoda, Acmella oleracea

Other plants to keep an eye out for in nurseries or along the roadside include thorny or prickly weeds, carnivorous plants, and anything that looks remotely weird or foreboding.

When designing your one-of-a-kind, spooky garden, do not neglect the house. One of the best ways to get a neglected, abandoned feel to your property is to plant a monstrous vine right next to the house.

Monster vine eating a building

You will know that you have succeeded if it is impossible to find the front door. Up north, Boston ivy will easily grow into a monstrous vine. For those of you who live in the Southeast, there is reason to rejoice - you can now get your Kudzu in either plain or variegated.

'Sherman's Revenge' Kudzu
- brought to you by Plant Delight's Nursery

Now, of course, if you really want a terrifying yard for Halloween, you could just drape everything with Poison Ivy..

I hope these tips have helped you in planning your very own ghastly garden space! Have a happy Halloween, and enjoy watching all those kids try to get through your now fabulously menacing front yard to trick-or-treat!

Saturday, October 27, 2012

When It Is Time to Take Down the Bird Feeder

The end of the summer was a troubling time for me and the Red House Garden bird community. We had a sick bird.

my sick House Finch

I noticed that this little House Finch constantly stayed on the bird feeder. Its eyes were swollen, and it didn't even notice me at one point when I was right next to the bird feeder - it had House Finch Eye Disease.

House Finch Eye Disease, sometimes called Mycoplasma Conjunctivitis, is a respiratory infection where the eyes of infected birds become swollen, red, and crusted over. Birds can recover from the infection, but the mortality rate is quite high from starvation or predation as these birds cannot see very well.

House Finch Eye Disease was first noticed in 1994 near Washington D.C. and can now be found all along the East coast. It affects mainly House Finches, though it has also been found in other birds in the same family, such as Goldfinches, Purple Finches, and Evening Grosbeaks.

the House finch scratching its eyes against the roof gutter.

House Finches are not native to the Eastern U.S. - they are from the West coast. All of our House Finches here in the East are actually descended from a small group of House Finches (or 'Hollywood Finches' as they were known back then) that were released in Long Island by bird dealers back in the 1940's when it became illegal to keep and sell them.

Hence our Eastern House Finches are all inbred and genetically inferior - and thus more susceptible to this disease.

So what to do about my little sick House Finch? I didn't want it to infect the other finches at the bird feeder. I tried disinfecting the bird feeder every day and limiting the amount of time it was up, but the sick bird still hung around the bird feeder quite a bit. And when I thought I spotted another House Finch that had swollen eyes a couple days later, I knew it was time - I had to take down the bird feeder and let the birds disperse.

House Finch Eye Disease has taken its toll

The sick House Finch was looking even worse by then - I do hope it survived, but more likely Nature took its course. At least with it being late summer, food was readily available for all the other birds that often stopped at my feeder. (And despite what my squirrels say, I'm sure they are finding some food around as well!)

It is recommended that the feeders stay down for at least two weeks when there is disease going around. I've had them down for over a month now as I've been too busy to put them back up, but soon I'll hang them back up for the fall migrating birds and for my winter residents.

And hopefully by then all my birds will be healthy and clear-eyed.