Mill Pond Garden Open Garden Day, Sunday, September 22nd, 2024

Mill Pond Garden Opens Sunday, September 22 from 9:30 AM to noon rain or shine, closed only for emergency weather conditions. Tickets are non-refundable and can be given as a gift. One ticket admits one vehicle with up to 6 passengers.

Mill Pond Garden is the only professional botanical garden in the Cape region, dedicated to providing the advantages of professional horticulture and mostly native displays tailored to the local growing conditions. The Garden is a certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation, displaying a wealth of ideas for gardeners to get ideas for attracting and increasing wildlife, including abundant clean water, big brush pile, dense planting and ground covers for foraging and protection, a hibernaculum for wintering of box turtles, two wintering sites for multiple reptiles and amphibians, bumble bee tubes for winter, nesting boxes for owls, bats, ducks, birds, and more. Visitors may expect to see bunnies, hummingbirds, lots of great garden and migratory birds, turtles, butterflies, dragonflies, and if lucky maybe a garter snake, bald eagle, great blue heron, green heron, osprey, owl, cormorant, or many other creatures.

The transition shows the end of summer flowers and the beginning of autumn flowers with the abundance of wildlife typical of this time of year, delights like more hummingbirds, and maybe a well-grown Praying Mantis. The many beauties to be seen at this time of year include the Angel Trumpets, goldenrod, asters, mist flowers, hibiscus, Liriope, Acidanthera, Camellia, bright ripe berries on trees and shrubs like native hollies, Hawthorne, Devil’s Club, diamond grass in full flower, Benary’s Giant Zinnias with many branches and giant flowers,  huge annuals, and tropicals like banana trees, basking turtles on turtle logs, Koi fish, with vistas of birds and other wildlife on Red Mill Pond.  This time of year of maturing seeds and fruits attracts even more birds and insects than usual. Visitors may like to check out the Garden’s homemade native bee boxes to see the egg-laying reed tubes being sealed up with clay for next spring hatch and pollinating to begin.  There is also a stack of edible Mushroom growing logs to see how easy it is for homeowners to grow their own mushrooms of many kinds in a deep shade spot, for harvesting in both cold weather like Shitakes, or hot weather like Lion’s Mane, and Chicken of the Woods.

Because this time of year is a bit cooler, it is a time people enjoy outdoor entertaining and using their gardens for sitting or walking to enjoy them more than any other time.  Therefore, visitors may like to note what plants provide interesting and beautiful flowers or other enjoyments suggesting what might do well in their own gardens. This purpose is part of what a professional botanical garden offers and aims for, to inform as well as to delight and provide wildlife habitat of mostly native plants for preservation that is meant to encourage homeowners to see what they, too, can do to increase habitat for declining numbers of wild birds, animals and insects. As famous Delaware scientist Douglas Tallamy says, ‘If 27 million home gardeners in America each add some basics for wildlife to their gardens, it may arrest or reverse the extinction event rapidly going on.’  A Horticulturist will be on duty to answer questions.