New Wildflower Path

This is John Garton, a Garden volunteer, who works in the Woodland Wildflower Garden. He has just completed building this new path in the Wildflower Garden. The path is dedicated to the memory of Carol Barten and Mary Birchenough, wildflower enthusiast and dedicated Garden volunteers. We do thank him for his efforts.

First spring butterflies

I saw a couple of sulfur butterflies swirling up in a courtship spiral early this afternoon. They're the first butterflies I've seen this spring! I'm not sure which they were, possibly Little Yellows.


This Cloudless Sulphur, taken by Gene Hanson, is visiting Lantana flowers. Gene was kind enough to let us use some of his butterfly images for interpretive signage.

A great blue heron having lunch

We often see great blue herons stopping by the ponds. Today, a group of SC Master Naturalists were lucky enough to see one nab a small fish in the Duck Pond, poke at it, and then, gulp!

On a cold rainy day, we were experiencing nature in the Garden, as we mused about holly berry 'tastiness', coral honeysuckle and hummingbirds, the nature of early flowering trees and shrubs, and talked about plants. We spent a good bit of the morning inside in the Nature Center, but then ventured forth for a loop around the Duck Pond.

I was pleased that the Duck Pond sign (with the nature note) had an observation to match!

Chameleon Meadow-In Praise of Shadow

Morning at the Redwood Meadow overlooking the last nature based sculpture by Hiroko Inoue and Yvette Dede.

Turtles and wild geese

Who-hoo! There were three turtles basking on the banks of the meadow pond at midday. This wouldn't be remarkable for the Duck Pond or the Hosta Garden pond, but the meadow pond has quite a history.

Having mostly leaked throughout its ~15 year history, a final comprehensive bentonite treatment seems to have finally resulted in a decent amount of water remaining in the pond. But, now, cattails have colonized one edge, so the willows probably aren't far behind. Herons and wild Canada geese are stopping by, too, so it's getting some notice. I wish I'd checked over the last few warm evenings for frog calls, too.

But I was delighted to see the turtles; hopefully, they're an indicator that the meadow pond is finally stabilizing.

Oconee Bells

Was walking along one of the paths in the Woodland Wildflower Garden today and came across the first Oconee Bell (Shortia galacifolia) blossom of the year. Maybe spring is close at hand!

Here's another photo that Ryan took about the same time, showing a close-up of the flower (posted by lkw).

Trout lilies, Oconee bells, and bloodroot

On a lunch time walk, my friend Meg and I saw our first spring woodland wildflowers. An early bloodroot flower on the Heusel Nature Trail foreshadowed the hundreds that will soon be in bloom.

In the Woodland Wildflower Garden, a single trout lily was open, but a group of Oconee Bells were in full flower across from Crucible (our first nature-based sculpture).

We also admired a lovely deciduous holly (Ilex decidua) full of berries in the Arboretum, near the longleaf pines, along with a prickly juniper (which definitely lived up to its name).

A mystery Juglans species puzzled us; the fruits looked like miniature teasels, and very un-Juglans like -- Juglans is the genus that walnuts are in. (A Google search on Juglans ailantifolia reveals that this should be a Japanese relative of walnuts.... hmm. I think we have an imposter!)