Costco Connection - March 2009

outdoor
living
Learning to
love your yard
It’s more than just grass and bushes

BU T TERFLIES AND HUMMINGBIRD: INGRAM PUBLISHING/RF

LILAC AND ROSE: © VISUAL LANGUAGE 1996,1998/RF

FOR MANY PEOPLE, work is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about their yard, evoking images of mowing, weeding and other similarly uninspiring tasks. The good news is that by simply rethinking your relationship with that outdoor space around your home, by learning to see the yard as an extension of the home, you can gain a new appreciation and a new level of enjoyment of all the simple pleasures your yard offers.

Here are just a few ideas for ways to transform your backyard into a space that is uniquely yours.

Attracting wild birds

Bird-watching and landscaping go hand in hand, if you know what plants are best for attracting birds. Many decorative berries,

while inedible for humans, are bird magnets. Some blooming plants serve multiple duty, filling the landscape with colorful foliage or berries and offering a number of functional

landscape uses, such as framing entryways, hiding the home’s foundation, softening the landscape and controlling erosion.

The criteria for bird-attracting foliage (and keeping your workload to a minimum) should include showiness of bloom, multi-season color, interesting branching patterns, cold-hardiness, berry output, beauty and ease of maintenance, including disease resistance. Among the trees and shrubs falling into that category are the Japanese flowering dogwood, saucer magnolia, eastern redbud, crab-apple, pear and ‘Sunrise’ forsythia.

Butterfly plants

If the idea of lots of birds in your backyard is overwhelming, you might want to create a backyard butterfly haven. Adult butterflies crave nectar from flowers, so the ones that have the most nectar will be most effective in attracting butterflies. Butterflies are nearsighted and are more easily attracted to large groups of color, with more vibrant colors attracting butterflies more readily. Also, some plants are

easier than others for butterflies to land on.

Plants, and the butterflies they attract, include:

Purple coneflower: Tiger swallowtail, monarch, skipper, fritillary, viceroy

Canada goldenrod: Clouded sulfur, monarch, American small copper, gray hairstreak

Common milkweed: Monarch, gray hairstreak, variegated fritillary

Asters: American small copper

Joe Pye weed: Silver-spotted skipper Violets: Spring azure blues

New York ironweed: Fiery skipper Coreopsis: Buckeyes

Because butterflies are cold-blooded, a butterfly garden should be an open, sunny garden, with a temperature of at least 60 F. Decorate with flat rocks that will warm up in the sun. Butterflies will use these as basking perches. Furnish butterfly gardens with damp areas, too, so that butterflies will have a place to take a break from the heat.—T. Foster Jones

The Costco Connection Costco locations and Costco.com provide a variety of items for creating or making over outdoor areas, from lawn seed and bare-root roses to gardening implements, lawn mowers, outdoor furniture and books.

Buyer’s
pıck
Jim Nelson
Lawn and
Garden Buyer

I WILL ADMIT, a watering tool set is not the sexiest item, but if you are passionate about gardening, conservation and value, the seven-piece, all-metal watering tool set from Orbit, available now at Costco,

will get your heart racing!

Watering tools such as these allow you to precisely control how much water you use, saving you money, conserving water and ensuring that your plants receive exactly the amount they need.

The zinc shower wand provides a gentle water flow for your delicate plants and flowers, and a shut-off lever simplifies on/off control. The

zinc adjustable nozzle eas-
ily adjusts from a fine mist
to a jet spray, and the zinc
nine-pattern turret nozzle
provides multiple spray pat-
terns to meet everyday
watering needs. And with the
easy-on, easy-off brass quick-
connects, changing hose attach-
ments is a snap.