Friday, June 01, 2012

Stokes Garden in Country Gardens Magazine

Our bird garden is featured in the summer issue of Country Gardens magazine, now on newsstands. Get your copy and learn all we share to help you attract birds.

Our 48 acre bird property in southern NH is named Bobolink Farm, here's a view from our deck.

We named our property after the Bobolinks who nest in our hayfields, which we do not cut until late summer so they can complete their breeding.

Everything is landscaped with an eye towards attracting birds. Here are the Prairie Fire crabapples in bloom. Their fruits attract Cedar Waxwings, robins, thrushes, bluebirds, vireos and more.

The article on our garden was produced by well-know garden writer, Tovah Martin and photographed by Rob Cardillo, one of the country's top garden photographers. Editor of Country Gardens, James Baggett also came on the shoot. We had lots of fun working with them all and the article is fabulous. It's titled "A Garden Takes Flight." Here Rob is standing on our deck to get an aerial view of our kitchen garden, and Don and James look on while Tovah is in the garden. There is a lot of work behind-the-scenes, including our getting the garden looking its best for the shoot. It rained for some of the time, but was misty at other times, so Rob was able to take photos.

Our kitchen garden has a hummingbird feeder hanging from the center planter. Pick veggies and enjoy the hummingbirds! We have many more tips for you to attract birds in the article.

We strive for good design and add plantings for the birds. I choose the plant material combinations, Don does much of the heavy work. 

A gazebo to the right has hummingbird feeders hanging from it, so we can enjoy them while sitting and overlooking this perennial border. A blue urn is a focal point.

We have many, many bird feeders, including offering unusual foods, like oranges for the Gray Catbirds.

 We have lots of bird houses and 15 breeding pairs of Tree Swallows, shown here, as well as Eastern Bluebirds. Enjoy the article!


5 comments:

Gail said...

Beautiful gardens!! I'm heading out to get the magazine now...

Kevin said...

Congrats on the magazine article! That view from your deck is not too shabby.

Calloways Cornelius Nursery said...

Congrats! You have a beautiful blog and I enjoy reading your posts. Your kitty picture is adorable.

John Field said...

I love that you have named your farm after the Bobolink. They are one of my favorite summer birds :)

Wonderful photos...I especially enjoyed the one of the two male American Goldfinches going at each other. Thanks for the blog.

birdhouses said...

Your garden is lovely. This is a wonderful blog!

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