Deer Me: The Garden Thrives

The deer are out and about all hours of the day. With the drought conditions, they continue to have to forage more often. They have very little fear of us. Our greyhound doesn't bark at deer nor does she chase the deer. As a result, they just amble out of the way when we go outside. They bed down in our front meadow at night. They drink from our manmade stream. Our natural stream in the woods continues to have some water as it is fed by underground springs.

The outer garden continues to do well with the deer and the drought. We've had very little rain, but what little we did get has set off the fall blooms.

Currently blooming in the outer garden and recommended for deer and drought tolerant:

Pineapple sage, tender perennial, red blooms
Salvia gregii Navajo Red, red blooms
Salvia black & blue, blue blooms
Buddliea, all colors
Osmanthus fragrans, evergreen shrub, white blooms, very fragrant
Lantana 'Miss Huff', tender perennial, shrub size, pink/yellow blooms
Hypericum x hidcote, semi-evergreen, perennial, yellow blooms
Spirea 'Neon Flash', deciduous shrub, magenta blooms on dark green foliage
Caryopteris (Blue Mist Shrub), blue blooms on bright foliage
Creeping perennial heliotrope, lavender blooms, groundcover
Vitex (Chaste Tree) is still blooming lavender flowers and looking
great
Nepeta keeps on blooming as long as it gets a trim after each bloom, a terrific perennial

Currently blooming in the fragrance garden, but on drip irrigation. This area is not fenced off, but the deer aren't bothering these plants:

Gardenia 'August Beauty', evergreen shrub, white blooms, very fragrant
Colocasia esculenta 'Fontanesii', perennial elephant ears, gold blooms, fragrant
Butterfly Ginger, perennial, fragrant white blooms
Swamp sunflower, perennial, hundreds of yellow blooms with dark centers

Ornamental grasses doing well in spite of drought, no irrigation, no deer problems:

Clump bamboo, evergreen here
Miscanthus 'Cosmopolitan', variegated white/green, bronze tassels
Miscanthus 'Little Zebra', gold bands on green, tassels starting up
Eragostis (love grass), blue green foliage and airy tassels
Pampas grass, green foliage, white plumes

The perennials that were deadheaded before the drought are finally starting to come back to life with green foliage at the base. Those include the coneflowers and coreopsis 'Creme Brulee'.

The lavender and rosemary plantings all have great foliage through the drought. The yucca is doing fine as expected. The smoke tree is doing well.

In the rain garden, on drip irrigation during droughts, is flourishing. The perennials include pseudocorus, Japanese and Siberian irises (no blooms this time of year), canna 'Tropical Rose' (still blooming), perennial ageratum (blooming), salvia ulignosa (bog salvia, still blooming).

The foliage of amsonia hubrechtii, a perennial is still lush and I'm looking forward to the fall color. This perennial is planted in both dry and moist settings. The deer leave this one alone.

After all of those winners, there are some losers. After years of successfully growing penstemon, they are looking bad and haven't bloomed as well as in previous years.

Inside my cottage garden (away from deer), the Japanese Beetles and the drought have done the most damage to my roses and weeping cherry. I continue to reassess the flower beds around our stream. Receving full sun all day, it was difficult to keep some flowers alive and I couldn't water them sufficiently. I'm starting to see some comeback, but I've been discouraged enough to decide to replant with drought tolerant plants next spring. I think I'd be happy with a mass planting of saliva greggii 'Navajo Red'! I may even move the weeping cherry out and replace it with a sweet bay magnolia (which is doing great in the fragrance garden on drip irrigation -- no pests).

Meanwhile, we're getting ready to plan and plant some more beds and looking at fall bulbs to plant (when the weather turns cool).

The butterflies are still around and I'm seeing more Monarchs again. We have three hummingbirds still hanging around the garden. Fortunately, the salvias are helping out in addition to the feeder.

Happy Gardening!
Cameron

Photographing Butterflies

This has been a great year for butterflies in the garden. The Monarchs came, they used the host plants of milkweed. The garden was certified as a Monarch Waystation. The Monarchs migrate south as far away as Mexico. With the loss of wild milkweed, it is crucial for gardeners to add this necessary host plant to help the Monarchs survive and thrive. (see my previous blog on Monarchs) I have also added a link to a very informative and educational blog on Monarchs and Milkweed written by one of my Forum Friends.

The Swallowtails were plentiful, sometimes they literally swarmed our butterfly bushes. Other butterflies were about and I tried to capture a few of the others with my camera to show you what varieties are found here in the Triangle area of North Carolina.

These first photos were taken last week in my garden. The last ones were taken earlier.

If you are interested in the camera that I use, it's a Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital Elph, 7.1 megapixels. I used the macro focus setting for the Red-banded Hairstreak, Common Buckeye, the Swallowtails and the Monarch. I used the zoom for the photos of the Pearl Crescent and the Variegated Fritallary. As you can see, the macro focus shots are much more detailed and finer quality. All of these photos have been compressed from several megabytes down to a size that will load quickly on the blog.

I carry the camera in my pocket and watch for the butterflies while I'm going about my gardening or strolls. Sometimes it is easy to get a close-up with the macro when the butterfly is calm and quiet on the flowers. However, if they are flitting about, I will resort to using the zoom lens knowing that the photos won't be as crisp.

I try to focus on the butterfly and wait for the wings to be open so that I can capture the full pattern. However, I won't pass on a great photo when the wings are closed. It usually takes a dozen or so shots of one butterfly to get one that's great. They are moving, so like kids and pets, you have to be patient and ready to snap a shot without a blur. I use a high-speed memory card to store the photos. The high speed allows my camera to be ready for the next shot very quickly.

None of these butterfly photos have been edited (except to add text to a few). I did not change the lighting or color balance with a photo editor. I cropped a bit of brown mulch off of the Pearl Crescent photo. What you see is what I got in the shot.

I use the software that is provided with the Canon camera to upload the photos to my PC. You can also use the software to export the photos and change the size so that they won't be so large when you post them or email them.

I use Google Picasa (web version) to organize and post photos here in my blogs and in the forums that I frequent. The slideshow that is embedded at the bottom of the blog page contains all the photos from this blog since the beginning. So, if you see the same photo twice, that's because I've used a photo more than once over time. All of my blog photos are automatically added to an album for me by Picasa.

Red-banded Hairstreak:



Pearl Crescent:



Variegated Fritallary:



Common Buckeye:



A Red Admiral showed up on September 19th.


Previous photos taken earlier this summer of Swallowtails and a Monarch:






By the way, all of the photos in my Tour of Tuscany blog were taken using the same camera. Other photos shown on this blog and my Define Before Design blog that were taken since March 2007 were from the Canon camera.

Happy gardening!
Cameron

Deer and Drought Update

Six weeks with no rain....here's a recap of my goals and the results so far.

I decided to create a deer tolerant, rather than deer resistant, garden. My definition of deer tolerant is: A plant that still looks good after being nibbled by deer.

An example has to do with new blooms. The deer nibbled a few new blossoms, but then left the plants alone. The result was that they had pinched back some of the perennials (which I would normally do) which increased the bloom count and bushiness of the plants. I also don’t mind if the deer come through in the fall and winter and deadhead the remaining blooms on sad looking perennials. I leave seed heads for birds, too.

I also made another big decision about gardening with deer on this property. I use no applied repellents. It makes no sense to me to spend hundreds of dollars every year to apply and re-apply repellents to the garden. I speak from experience! At a previous house, I had hostas and hydrangeas out in the back yard. I tried many different kinds of deer repellents at great cost – only to have the deer sneak in just after a rain and before I could reapply the repellent. I also tried the deer netting, but it really distracts from the plants.

With the current drought, the deer herd on our property (now exceeding 20+), is coming into our outer garden nightly to drink from our manmade stream and waterfall. With the natural creek in our woods dried up, I'm glad to be helping the deer and co-existing in harmony. With all the tracks around the plants and yet no damage, I do believe I've established a garden with the right plants for both deer and drought.

My definition of drought tolerant: Once established, plants can survive without water for two-three weeks in the summer.

That said, at the time of this writing, most of the outer garden hasn’t received any supplemental water and no rain in over six weeks. We’ve had temperatures in the 95-100 degree range for many days and weeks at a time.

We have an unusual environment in that we receive full sun all day in the summer. (We took advantage of this setting for a passive solar home.) Such a setting requires really tough plants. Lavender, buddleia, cotoneaster, lantana, snapdragons, black and blue saliva, lambs ear, and creeping perennial heliotrope have received no water in six weeks and are thriving. All of the plants are well-mulched in good garden soil. None of these plants have been in our garden longer than two years, having moved here in September 2005.

I'm now planning what bulbs to add this fall and what plants need to be moved or discarded. I am also planning an ornamental grasses garden. While I've used OGs throughout the garden, I want to make a nice display garden using some of the very large varieties.

Meanwhile -- there is finally rain in the forecast! Perhaps I'll be reporting on our rain garden in the near future!

Happy gardening,
Cameron