Marin conservation photographers create their dream garden

Nita Winter and Rob Badger may have plenty to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, but there’s one thing in particular that makes their hearts flutter: the garden they planted for wild birds and monarch butterflies.

Winter grew up on Long Island, New York, and had a small vegetable garden. Badger’s family, who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, had vegetable gardens as well.

“He taught me how to garden,” says Badger of his uncle. “I had brown hair, his was gray. We called each other ‘Farmer Brown’ and ‘Farmer Gray.’”

Winter and Badger, both conservation photographers who focus on wildflowers on public lands in California and other Western states, live in Marin City with a quarter-acre of land to “plant anything we wanted, wherever we wanted,” Winter says.

The couple, the authors of “Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change,” wanted their property, purchased 25 years ago and blessed with bay views, to be a wildlife-welcoming garden of native plants.

“After decades of photographing wildflowers and their habitats, we decided to focus on rewilding our land,” she says. “We know how important it is to restore habitats for wildlife as more land is lost to development, nonnative gardens and invasive species.”

They got help from their local scrub jays that “have planted coastal live oak acorns over the years,” she says. “They are helping us turn our property into an oak woodland and we really enjoy watching them.”

The couple started their garden with ceanothus, and today, their landscape is colorful with yellows from buttercups; oranges from California poppies and sticky monkeyflowers; purples from Pacific asters, blue sages and ceanothus; reds from California fuchsias, buckwheat hybrids, bee plants and toyon berries; and whites from yarrow and toyon flowers.

“Beautiful tall beige seed stalks of native bunch grasses add a wonderful texture and sense of movement with the very frequent winds and breezes we have in Marin City,” she says.

They’ve learned a lot along the way, she says, including how native plants that spread easily either through rhizomes or seed dispersal — i.e., Pacific aster, narrowleaf milkweed, purple needlegrass and toyon — are helpful and how “trimming” by deer can be beneficial for plants, as long as they don’t eat too much.

Winter and Badger especially appreciate the winged creatures in their garden. They like to watch hummingbirds sip nectar from the feeder and the various birds that stop at any of the four bird baths.

“We have seen more birds as the oaks get bigger and there are more flowering plants,” she says. “We have documented 40 different species on our property with short visits by very special migratory birds such as the western tanager and lazuli bunting.”

Last winter, a pair of western bluebirds found the newly installed birdhouse, made by local craftsman Brian Beard, within 10 minutes.

“It was so much fun to watch them feed their second brood of four chicks this season,” she says. “The first brood produced two fledglings that stayed around to help their parents by catching insects and feeding them to the new chicks. It is a family affair.”

About 10 years ago, the couple got serious about supporting the struggling monarch butterfly population by planting native milkweed for food and other plants for habitat to cover all four life stages — egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly.

“Our first year, we had eight monarch butterfly caterpillars,” says Winter, who checked on them daily.

Last winter, even though the milkweed had spread 5 feet in all directions, the 37 new monarchs had munched their way through the supply so quickly that she had to put out a call to neighbors for more.

“I felt like I had precious children I had to watch and care for,” she says. “It was fun but a challenge to keep track of them.”

Since then, the milkweed has recovered and Winter and Badger look forward to hosting their next flutter of butterflies.

The only thing she’d do differently is to “have started much sooner to introduce more native plants and pollinator-friendly plants.”

Here, she shares these tips:

• Visit Calscape.org or xerces.org for the best suggestions for native plants and the ones that support wildlife.

• Plant toyon.

“It’s a great source of food for many birds like western bluebirds,” she says.

• Be patient.

“Don’t plant plants too close together,” she says. “Give them room to expand.”

Show off

If you have a beautiful or interesting Marin garden or a newly designed Marin home, I’d love to know about it.

Please send an email describing either one (or both), what you love most about it and a photograph or two. I will post the best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.

Don’t-miss event

• The inaugural Design Sausalito celebrates local makers and artists in the fields of design, fashion, textiles and the arts from Friday through Sunday. Ticket prices vary. Visit designsausalito.org for a full schedule and to purchase tickets.

PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.