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Window boxes can become a definite part of a foundation planting as can soil wells or raised beds (also called “planters”) that some architects include in their building designs.

It is wise to avoid soil wells if possible; they usually require artificial watering. The drainage problem in some instances may also become serious. In regions where the winters get quite cold, the plants growing in soil wells are likely to freeze and will have to be replaced each spring.

If you do use flowers or plants in window boxes or soil wells, try to limit them to a few very soft-colored flowers, and mainly to foliage plants such as English Ivy, the trailing Asparagus Fern, etc.

Winter Care of Window Boxes

Each fall you should remove plants and soil from window boxes for several reasons. One is that this will avoid having the box break away at the joints due to frozen earth expanding. Also by doing this you can change the soil in the box. Growing flowers in a box robs the soil of its natural nutrients and new soil should be added or the old should be wholly replaced. Still another reason is that emptying the box gives you an opportunity to make necessary repairs on the box. Most boxes would last much longer if given a little repair and a new coat of paint each winter.

Grass in Foundation Planting

The question of where to have grass around the foundation planting has not been given much consideration in America. Picture a walk running parallel to the house between the driveway and the front door, and 6 feet away from the house as already suggested. Now visualize a foundation planting requiring 5 feet of this space; that leaves a 1-foot strip for grass between the foundation planting and the walk. It is hopeless to try to maintain such a narrow strip as decent turf. Lawn mowers are simply not made for it; the blades grind into the soil and make raw, bare spots. This dulls your lawnmower blades while it sharpens your temper.

The usual alternative is to get down on your hands and knees with a pair of grass clippers and spend valuable minutes and hours trimming the strip by hand. Now think how simple it would be to continue the ground cover all the way out to the walk and eliminate the grass strip altogether, thereby saving much laborious cutting and trimming. This is another instance where you can exercise judgment in making your own landscape plans.

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Strictly speaking, this is for the birds. It is not for those among us who are forever searching out a new (and easier) diet! Neither is it for all the birds – it’s just for the winter midgets, who bless us with their daily calls, if we so much as leave them a crumb in the snow.

If you have tried all the tricks to entice them – cages of suet, peanut butter, ears of corn, bright berries, sunflower seeds, sand – probably you have observed, with disappointment, that the hairy woodpeckers crowd out the little downier, and the blue jays seem to take care of driving away most of the others.

Despite all we know of the survival of the fittest, there surely must be a right place in the winter scene for the little birds, without having to wait their turn, and eat the leavings.

No doubt the bright eyes of the tufted titmice, the jerky flight of the downy woodpeckers, the lowly ways of the snowbirds, the upside-down eating habits of the nuthatches, the cheery chatter of the chickadees, who scold you while you are refilling the feeding station, plus the cuteness and beauty of them all, have endeared the wee birds to you far beyond any affinity you may have for the doves, the owls, the rusty blackbirds, the cardinals, the quail and pheasant, and certainly the jays.

That is why it is worthwhile making special places for the small birds to get their food, places for them exclusively, beyond the reach of their larger neighbors, the birds, squirrels, dogs, cats.

Have you ever offered them their food in a grapefruit shell? If not, try it, and they will love you for it. Just remove the white membranes from several grapefruit half shells after the fruit has been used, and place the shells upright in a shallow pan. Fill each one level full of wild bird seed. Melt, slowly, one-fourth pound of suet for each shell you are preparing, and then pour the hot liquid over the seeds until you can see it around them. Place shells in the refrigerator to set. Add more melted suet several times as it cools and shrinks, until the shells are filled solidly to the top.

Next make four holes in the shell with an ice pick, 1/2-inch from the top, and continue upward through the contents until the point of the ice pick comes out through the top of the suet. For each hole, cut a piece of small waxed twine 18 inches in length. Tie one end of a separate length of twine carefully through each of the holes. Now bring the four pieces of twine evenly together about ten inches above the grapefruit shell and tie them together. Finally, tie the remaining twine at the top, securely around the lower branch of a tree near your feeding station and within view of your window. Several shells can be placed on the same branch within three feet of each other, although it is wise to put up just one, in the beginning, until the birds have made its acquaintance.

If the weather is severe and the snow deep, the shells will need replenishing in two or three weeks. You will know it is time, when the birds go down into the shell, rather than staying on the rim. The same shells may be used again and again although you will prefer using fresh ones each time, as they do shrink in size, and in extreme weather the bright yellow coloring darkens some.

When our littlest child brought home our first shell from her club meeting some years ago, we did not dream that any bird would ever visit it. The next day the first chickadee stopped by, which was the beginning of a tradition in our garden that will continue on as long as there are snowdrifts, and grapefruit, and winter midgets.

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