The Healthy Garden

A garden can be a magical place filled with all kinds of amazing creatures. Over the past 13 years we have worked hard in our garden here in South Huntington to make it attractive to all the beautiful creatures around us.

Praying Mantis fill the gardens, the young praying mantis is hard to spot but the adults are quite large and are easier to see. Every year we will find one praying mantis in the butterfly bush under our kitchen window. They don't eat the pollen or the leaves on the butterfly bush, they eat the insects that are attracted to this bush.

Butterflies will fly throughout the garden on a sunny day. There are many plants that grow well here on Long Island that will help attract and feed the butterflies. They always can be seen on the Liatris in our garden.

Here's a butterfly on the butterfly bush! The botanical name for this bush is Buddleia davidii.

Bees are also beneficial insects in the garden. Without bees, we wouldn't have flowers, vegetables and all the other wonderful plant life. If you leave the bee alone, it won't sting you.

Ants will also help spread pollen around. Can you see the ants climbing on the Bronze fennel flower?

One thing many people don't realize is that you need to have plants that will feed caterpillars if you want to have butterflies in the garden. That means that some of your plants will be chewed upon but just imagine how beautiful the garden will be with those butterflies flying around.


Not only do you have to have plants for the wildlife in your garden, you need to have water for them and you need to have an organic garden. By that, I mean that you should not use chemical products in your garden if you want to attract insects and wildlife.


Birds are creatures that we love to have in our garden. They eat many insects such as mosquitoes and they fill the air with the most wonderful sounds!

This photo shows a baby bird when it first flew out of it's birdhouse. Do you think it's asking the gnome "are you my mother"?


We are always so excited when we find a turtle in the garden. If we were putting chemicals on our lawn we might have nicer grass but we wouldn't have any of these cool creatures.


Some people don't like the rabbits in their garden because they eat the plants but how can you not love this adorable creature? If you don't use chemicals on your lawn, you will have lots of clover and the bunnies will eat the clover instead of your flowers.

There's all kinds of things to see and do in your garden. We all think of gardening as planting seeds and flowers but you can do more than that. My daughter Emily used to love to go around the garden and photograph the creatures that she found.

One day she found a baby robin that had fallen out of a nest. We read that the mother bird would continue to care for it even though it was on the ground so we moved it to a part of the garden where it had some shelter from plant material.

Emily named the robin Einstein, can you tell why?

We continued to watch Einstein for many days and weeks and he grew up to be a beautiful robin.

This post has been written for Mrs. Diane Labate and the students at Maplewood Elementary school in South Huntington.

The Magic-maker

This might look like a kind-of-battered, pretty-dirty, seen-better-days piece of garden equipment. In truth though, it's a magic maker!

Many years ago we borrowed this Flowtron leaf eater from a neighbor. When we went to return it, they told us we could keep it as they didn't use it any more.

This is one of the piles of leaves on our property. I had bagged up close to 70 bags of leaves last fall. A nice mix of Oak leaves and various Maple leaves were gathered. I do have to add that having all those bags of leaves lying around isn't the most attractive thing but now that spring is here, we are so happy we put up with the sight of those leaf bags.

My husband Don has been shredding leaves when ever he can find a spare hour or two. It's an easy job but very time consuming as this older model leaf eater will clog if you dump too many leaves in it at one time. By the way, there is a new, super-de-duper model of Flowtron leaf eater available at Amazon.com and it looks amazing!

The final product that comes out of this leaf mulcher is the most amazing stuff. It's soft and fluffy, smells heavenly and best of all has no chemicals, dies or stuff like that added to it. It's the ultimate organic product for the garden.

I will use these leaves to mulch beds, add these leaves to potting soil to give it some "oomph" and also use them to mulch the tops of the pots that I've been potting up. What ever is left after all of that will get added to the compost heap which is mostly leaves anyway.

One more note, today some of the ladies from our local gardening club are coming here at 10:30 to learn how to divide some perennials. Some more women are coming tomorrow at 4:00. If you are reading this and are in the vicinity of South Huntington, you are welcome to stop by and watch as I divide plants. If you can't make it, don't worry, there's lots more dividing to do and we'll be running workshops through the next month or two.

See ya!
Melanie