Duke Gardens and Wildlife Surveys

 

gray squirrel

Duke Gardens is an ideal place to practice skills I've learned in "Wildlife Surveys," a graduate school course at the Nicholas School of the Environment offered in the spring semester. The varied landscape provides an important training area where my classmates and I can perfect our identification and observation abilities in a beautiful environment full of wildlife.

As part of our Bird Surveys section, we sat on the grassy knoll sloping down to the Asiatic Arboretum pond. First identification exercise: waterfowl. This massive pond has a proliferation of both exotic and native species, and we learned the field markings of hooded mergansers and wood ducks - both North Carolina year-round residents. A great blue heron refused to be left out of the party and landed gracefully in a tall cypress tree directly behind us.

observing and recording

We curved around the edge of the pond, pointing out ruby-crowned kinglets, tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, sparrows, yellow-rumped warblers, and white-breasted nuthatches. New and experienced birders alike enjoyed learning together and spending a sunny Friday outside.

"I chose Duke Gardens to practice birding because it's one of the only easily accessible spots on main campus where we can see both passerines (perching birds) and waterfowl," our instructor, Dr. Nicolette Cagle, wrote me in an email. "I wanted the students to be able to practice observing different families of birds."

Wildlife Surveys and Duke Gardens

"My favorite part of Duke Gardens is the gorgeous Blomquist Garden of Native Plants," Cagle continues. "It's a fantastic repository of the Southeast's native woody plants, and it attracts lots of native birds as well."

white-throated sparrow

The Blomquist Garden is full of more than just birds. Our second Wildlife Surveys' unit described mammal observation, and I made loops around the Blomquist Garden  looking for one of our most ubiquitous animals: the gray squirrel.

I watched them forage along the ground, dart into trees and bushes, and stow away more than a few bird-feeder seeds for the duration of the winter ahead. Sketching and recording their movements in my outdoor notebook, for an hour I practiced the craft of a long line of field naturalists, including Charles Darwin, Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, who spent their lives observing the natural world.

Each month for the duration of the semester, I will continue to write my naturalist observations of Duke Gardens. Though I have been visiting the Gardens multiple times a week since August, this is an opportunity to enjoy and learn about the Gardens in a new, more nuanced way. Earning class credit for birding? That's just icing on the cake.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Blogger and photographer Erika Zambello is a graduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Conservation at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

Garden Guild: A Fun Way to Support Duke Gardens!

The popular Garden Guild Holiday Craft Sale

by Chuck Hemric

Director of Volunteer Services

The Garden Guild at Sarah P. Duke Gardens is a group of talented crafters who gather weekly to create beautiful nature-focused items as a source of financial support for the Gardens. Their annual Holiday Craft Sale continues to grow and increase in revenue.

 Garden Holiday Guild Craft Sale

Members of this group join for different reasons. One of the members recently commented, “You get to meet fun-loving people with like interests, which provides great weekly mental health .... Fun and laughter is the best medicine.” Yet another stated, “The sale is the pinnacle of our hard work, and the excitement builds as the day approaches. We are glad to see our work appreciated and purchased.”

Garden Guild members

This talented group is looking to expand its membership and breadth of “crafty” ideas. It does not matter if you possess certain skills or not - the main requirement is that you are teachable. The group meets on Mondays from 1:30-4 p.m.

One of the Garden Guild's favorite craft items

Anyone interested in joining the Garden Guild can contact Chuck Hemric at 919-668-1705 or chemric@duke.edu. See below for more fun Garden Guild crafts!

Photos by Erika Zambello and Chuck Hemric

Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens receives roughly half of its operating budget from Duke University. The rest comes from people like you, who value all that this public botanic garden has to offer. Duke Gardens is at 420 Anderson Street. Learn more at gardens.duke.edu.

Journaling for garden planning

 

Magazines and seed catalogs can help you envision

your goals in your garden journal

Despite all indications, winter is a great time to garden -- virtually.

New seed catalogs are arriving every day, new varieties are available, new plants are introduced, and that hard-to-find plant you have been dreaming of is now listed at your favorite nursery. It’s almost more than a gardener can take in – so many plants, so little space!

The season of winter bestows one large gardening benefit: the time to evaluate and plan. Spending your winter assessing last year’s garden will help you move closer to your ideal in next year’s garden.

Start a garden journal to organize your notes and thoughts. Perhaps you have a stack of plant labels and seed packets from this year? Take the time now, while it is fresh in your mind, to make notes about what you like about these plants and what did not suit you.

In the journal, make a rough sketch of your garden and add notes about plans, changes you are considering, stubborn areas that just won’t become the garden you want. Most gardeners move back and forth between general ideas – “I want more fragrance in my garden”  – to specific solutions – plant a paperbush here, a daphne there, and so on.

Make note of specific problems so you can prepare for them this year. Perhaps one area of the garden did not get sufficient water. Can you install a simple soaker hose irrigation system? Is one are infested by a noxious weed or pest? Spend some time this winter researching how you may control that problem.

Gardens journals can help you plan for the garden next year as well. Create a calendar with seed-starting schedules, planting dates and transplant dates. The calendar could also list your favorite plant sales -- for example the Duke Gardens Spring Plant Sale on April 5.

Do you have multitudes of photographs of your garden through the years? Now is the time to organize those and use them as a tool to plan ahead. With digital photography and camera phones so prevalent, most of us have files of photographs that require hunting and searching through to find the image you recalled.

This winter may be an ideal time to organize those photos so they are useful to you. There are terrific tools that allow you to organize and then easily find any photo in your digital files.

One example is Adobe’s Lightroom. You can devise a system to organize photos by key words -- for example, color notations, season notations, flower, plant or landscape view notations. These key words will help you locate the photographs again when you are looking for all spring views or all red flowers in your garden. Each photograph can carry multiple key words, so you don’t have to choose only one definition for an image. Lightroom also helps you edit and make adjustments to the image, improving lighting or cropping to frame it better.

Duke Gardens is offering a 5-session course in Lightroom beginning Feb. 6. Students may bring their own laptops to class and work with instructor Al Gorham to learn all of Lightroom's capabilities. For more information or to register for this or other Duke Gardens classes, please call 919-668-1707.

The time to assess, re-imagine and contemplate additions and subtractions is one of the pleasures of gardening. The anticipation keeps us out there planting, weeding, and seeking that perfect garden.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens receives roughly half of its operating budget from Duke University. The rest comes from people like you, who value all that this public botanic garden has to offer. Duke Gardens is at 420 Anderson Street. Learn more at gardens.duke.edu.

Columnist Jan Little is director of education and public programs at Duke Gardens. This column first appeared in the Durham Herald-Sun.

Species Spotlight: Mandarin Duck

Duke Gardens is home to our very own Mandarin duck, Aix galericulata. Native to Russia, China and Japan, Mandarin ducks live in forest ponds and streams. While the females are brown and drab, the males are a beautiful mix of red, yellow, blue, orange and purple - so bright, in fact, that one Gardens visitor  calls him "Skittles."

Beyond their colorful feathers, Mandarin ducks are known for their long-distance migratory flights and, according to the University of Michigan, "have been known to cover 500 miles in 24 hours." Our bird, of course, does not migrate. He came from the Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, N.C.

Mandarin ducks are well loved in all parts of the world, and in addition to delighting visitors to Duke Gardens, Sylvan Heights and elsewhere, they also serve as a symbol of happiness and marital fidelity in Asia. Unfortunately, habitat destruction has decimated their breeding grounds, and their population could be as low as 20,000. Luckily, Mandarin ducks have a notoriously awful taste, and are thus not very vulnerable to predators.

Mandarin duck (right) and the similarly beautiful native wood duck.
 Both are members of the Aix genus, but from different parts of the world.

Come to Duke Gardens and check out our very own Mandarin duck in the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum's pond. Post on our Facebook page to share your photos and comments on our most colorful waterfowl resident!

To learn more, visit the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity page.

Blogger Erika Zambello is a graduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Conservation at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

Winter in the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden

Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden after last week's dusting of snow.

by Lindsey Fleetwood
horticulturist, Doris Duke Center Gardens

Winter at Sarah P. Duke Gardens is an exciting time of year. Last year most of our fall sown crops were able to withstand our lowest temperatures, which dipped to 19 degrees. This year has been more challenging, with our lowest temperatures reaching single digits. On the bright side, these frigid temperatures will help to kill some of the overwintering harmful pests and diseases, such as mildew spores and squash bugs!

To help fend off the cold, we have set up several hoop houses with frost fabric 
over some of our broccoli, cauliflower and spinach.

Winter is a time for planning and reevaluating, ordering seeds, planting seeds, anticipating the taste of that first ripening tomato. Here in the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden we are doing all of those things. On these very cold mornings, we have been settling in with our mounds of seed catalogs, eyes feasting on colorful images of golden green beans, orange tomatoes, red okra and so many more neat varieties of edibles. This is one of my favorite parts. I love to see that big orange envelope of seeds arrive in the mail. They're here!

Late January is a good time to start seeds that require a longer growing season, such as peppers. This is also a good time to sow seeds that you wish to have larger transplants, like eggplant.  We have been sowing other seeds to plant back in the spring garden once these frigid temperatures let up, such as warm season onions, arugula, mustard and kale.

Two of our volunteers, Patty and Cynthia, 
work on sowing seeds in peat pots.

Keep checking back for more updates from the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden!

Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens receives roughly half of its operating budget from Duke University. The rest comes from people like you, who value all that this public botanic garden has to offer.

Tips to Improve Your Landscape

The Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden

is a great place to get landscape guidance.

Photo by Robert Ayers.

By Erika Zambello

Each home has its own unique landscape. And a successful landscape requires design and forethought to align with the lifestyle and needs of the home. Jeff Evans, a licensed landscape architect and instructor of Duke Gardens’ “Twelve Ways to Improve Your Landscape” course, spoke to me about how to approach improving your own landscape.

Envisioning your future outdoor space and how it will enrich your life is the goal of landscape design. “Does the homeowner want more parking, a rose garden, more privacy?” Evans asks. Does the homeowner want to be actively engaged in the landscape garden, or is it primarily meant to be viewed? In addition to space-use concerns, a homeowner must consider whether there are potential site problems, such as drainage or a need for seating and entertaining areas.

The second set of questions homeowners must ask involves what challenges their properties may pose to their overall vision. Are the outdoor areas shady or exposed? Is there too much drainage or too little? Challenges, Evans tells me, are really opportunities to address how your individual landscape fits within the broader environment, and they are thus opportunities to be creative.

As an example, many homeowners are dissatisfied with their outdoor living spaces. Clients often come to Evans complaining that their space is uninteresting and too small, he says. How can this be addressed by altering the landscape?

To answer this question, you must ask another. A rectangle is just a rectangle, Evans says. “How can we take that space and make it better accommodate the way you want to use it?” If you envision a private enclave, divide a larger outdoor space into smaller areas using plants or other building materials. If you need a larger space for family and friends, you can still make it your own through creative use of materials. Instead of a concrete slab, use cobbles, bricks, stone or other interesting ground materials.

“Add personalized elements like a fountain or colorful furniture,” Evans suggests. “It’s a question of who you are.” Use fun fabrics, decorations, or natural objects on walls or other flat spaces. Plant special bushes or flowers for their color or fragrance. If budget is a concern, don’t be afraid to repurpose decorations, statuary or materials from other parts of your house, or from thrift stores or consignment shops.

“I love working with people,” Evans says. Asking the right questions about each home’s landscape priorities, he says, is the first step toward explaining what they can’t put into words.

If you want to learn more ways to improve your own landscape, check out Duke Gardens’ “Twelve Ways to Improve your Landscape” on Jan. 23, from 7-8:30 p.m. The cost is $15; $12 Duke Gardens members. You may register by calling 919-668-1707. To see additional class offerings and events, please go to our calendar page.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens receives roughly half of its operating budget from Duke University. The rest comes from people like you, who value all that this public botanic garden has to offer. Duke Gardens is at 420 Anderson St.

Blogger Erika Zambello is a graduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Conservation at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

Species Spotlight: Great Blue Heron

The Garden Pond in the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum is home to numerous species of exotic and native waterfowl, but it is also the favorite hunting ground for one of North America's largest birds: the great blue heron. 

 
This feathered resident stands at over 4 feet tall and sports a handsome array of blue and white feathers. Though their color and size have obviously earned them their name, great blue herons are also known for their bright yellow eyes and long, dark, feathered eye stripe.

 
To catch their prey, great blue herons stand stalk-still waiting for a fish or frog to approach. As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology writes, "Watch for the lightning-fast thrust of the neck and head as they stab with their strong bills." The catfish in the Asiatic Arboretum Pond are their particular favorites.

Great blue herons are habitat generalists, and they can be found near saltwater or freshwater, along lakes, ponds, rivers, mudflats or salt marshes. Here at Duke Gardens, our heron prefers the Virtue Peace Pond of the Doris Duke Center Gardens, the Garden Pond of the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum, or surveying his kingdom from the top of one of the tallest pines overlooking the Historic Gardens.

Next time you visit Duke Gardens, keep an eye out for our resident heron. Though visitors must be careful not to approach too closely or disturb the heron (it is a wild bird), he is sure to provide some picturesque views and photographs!

Blogger Erika Zambello is a graduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Conservation at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.