By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

Photos by Alicia Martin

We can't wait to check out the Late Show Gardens, a brand new garden show at Cornerstone in Sonoma, California focusing on design and sustainability. We've been looking forward to it for months since the contributors are some of the biggest names in horticulture—essentially the who's who of the garden scene—from the Bay Area and beyond.

As you can imagine, pulling together a garden show is a major undertaking. It involves endless planning and organizing, and the week before the show, when designers actually start building the display gardens, is especially intense. Tons of soil are hauled in, along with large trees, landscape art, and accessories—the photo above is a behind-the-scenes look at two displays, Growth Melt and Overgrowth, in progress. We can't wait to see what they look like when they're done!

The show kicks off this Thursday 9/17 with an evening preview party, and runs through Sunday 9/20. I'll be there Friday—hope to see you there!

For info and tickets, go to thelateshowgardens.org or call 415/721-1550.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Honey bees get all the press , but they don't do all the work.  There are dozens of species of native bees equally willing to pollinate your plants.  One of them, the bumble bee, we all know and love.  But the smaller ones -- Anthidium, Xylocopa, Osmia, Halictid, Andrenid, Megachillid, Mlissodes, Anthophorid, -- you likely don't even notice.  The guy seen here--a Halictid, I'm guessing--is an example.

It's not hard to attract more of these hard workers to your garden.  All it takes is providing the right nectar plants.  Emerson Commmunity Garden in San Luis Obispo is proving just how quickly you can get results. 

The gardeners using the twenty nine plots in the Garden began an experiment with entomologist Dr. Gordon Frankie of the University of California Berkeley in 2007.  They began adding flowers known to attract these bees to their individual plots.  (The gardeners were primarily interested in growing edibles, and there were few ornamentals in the Garden when the experiment began.)

It didn't take long to see an increase in the number and type of bees showing up. What's more, says Barbara Smith, one of the plot holders and the local coordinator of the project -- it's her space you see below -- everyone in the community garden has seen improvements in their crop yields. And yields get a little better each season as the gardeners learn more about bee gardening and the number and variety of bees keeps improving.

You don't have to grow anything exotic either as you can see.  Toadflax (Linaria purpurea) gallardia, catmint, asters, rudbeckia, and salvias -- all common garden ornamentals -- are doing a great job luring in native bees at Emerson Community Garden.  There is no shortage of honey bees here either. 

If you're in San Luis Obispo drop by and take a look.  Emerson is at the corner of Nipomo and Pismo Streets.  Look for plants with markers like this to see what they're luring in.  Or visit the U.C. Berkeley  Urban Bee Gardens website to find out what to plant.

Sunset's garden staff is so enthused about the success of the Emerson example, we're going to add some of the plants from Dr. Frankie's list in our own test garden.  Can you have the same success in a small garden about the size as a typical backyard as you can in a community garden?  We'll let you know.

Or, if you're doing it already, please tell us about your successes.

By Hazel White, Sunset contributor

Photo by Marion Brenner

 A new outdoor garden show, focusing on design and sustainable practices, runs September 18–20 at Cornerstone Sonoma. See 18 gardens that propose imaginative solutions to climate change by designers such as Chandler and Chandler, Beth Mullins, Gary Ratway, and Shirley Alexandra Watts. Among the 19 speakers are photographer/author Ken Druse, Tom Fischer of Timber Books, Mark Hertsgaard, environment correspondent for The Nation, and garden designers Glenn Withey and Charles Price. Shopping is horticultural top of the line: Australian Native Plants Nursery, Chimera Nursery, Digging Dog Nursery, Momiji Nursery, Renee’s Garden Seeds, San Marcos Growers, Sunnyside Organic Seedlings and many more. For information and tickets: www.thelateshowgardens.org or 415/721-1550.

Last week we relayed a story about very clever squirrels we'd come across in the book Squirrel Wars. And we promised to mail the book to anyone who could top the story.  I think Kirsten Begg has done it.  Here is her story:

"We thought we had finally thwarted our squirrels (and amused our cats at the same time) by installing a window-mounted bird feeder to a bay window.  It was 6-7 ft off the ground, the seed was covered by a plastic "roof", and there did not appear to be a squirrel in sight, just birds.

Then about 2 wks in, we hear a loud thud.  A squirrel had dropped off a second-story roof onto the bay window roof and had then dropped off (not always succesfully) onto the small roof on the bird feeder, an area maybe 3" x 10", which was only attached to the window with rubber suckers.

At which point, although nose-to-nose with my cats through the glass, the chubby squirrel would sit in the feeder undeterred by bangs on glass or any kind of attempt to scare it away.  He would chomp away until either the seed ran out or the feeder fell off the window, at which point he would be joined by all his squirrel friends.

It turned out to be easier to raid the window feeder than it was to attempt the 8 foot leap from atop a nearby tree to the top of our baffle-protected, pole-mounted bird feeder.

Incidentally,  they mastered that, too, landing on a tiny bar of wrought iron, not always successfully but successfully enough that it was attempted regularly."

Kirsten sent photos to prove her tale.  Squirrel Wars is headed her way.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

What I like most about this scene from Julia Rice's garden in Cambria (a detail from Monday's post on artistic things to do with a dead tree) is that the color combination was inspired by the chartreuse birdhouse, a present from her husband Monty..

The chartreuse plants with the small white flowers are feverfew. Chrysanthemum parthenium `Aureum'.  You might find it sold as 'Golden Feather.'  The yellow flowered ground cover is a sedum of some sort. The red rose in the background is the climber `Blaze', and there's a darker red Martha Washington-type pelargonium below it.

Now here's the thing.  Despite building a color scheme around it, Julia still isn't convinced she likes the color of the  birdhouse and is thinking of repainting it white.  Shana McCormick of Great Gardens, who took me to this garden, lobbied for keeping it as is, as did I.  But I'm not sure we convinced Julia.  Want to help us?

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

In the post immediately above, I mentioned how Tucson garden writer and designer Scott Calhoun likes to use dried agave and desert spoon stalks for his native bee nesting sites.  And I love the naturalness of that approach, especially for casual gardens.

If your style is more formal, though, you might prefer the approach of his Tucson colleague, Greg Corman.  Landscape designer Corman designs nesting habitats that can double as sculpture.  They are constructed of pieces of wood rescued from salvage yards framed in steel.  (The steel is often recycled, too.)  Metal artist Tidhar Ozeri helps him construct the pieces.  There are more examples on Corman's website.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

As an avid birder, I'm astounded at how good birds are at concealing their nests—often by hiding them in plain sight. I photographed the hummingbird nest pictured below just outside my son's condo in San Diego a couple of weeks ago. It's built on top of some wind chimes just outside a front door in a garden courtyard. Those are baby hummers there (Anna's, I think): having completely outgrown their nest, they fledged the next day about 18 days after hatching.

Last spring a friend showed me a dark-eyed junco's chick-filled nest in a petunia basket just below eye level a couple of feet from his front door. I checked a similar flower basket hanging from the corner of my deck: there was a nest there too. Thinking back, I remember another hummingbird nest on top of an electric meter in a utility shed, and a winter wren's nest in the roots of an upturned Douglas fir. I've had violet green swallows nest on a beam that supported my front porch, and robins in my rhododendrons.

Birds breed in spring, and gardens can be great places to raise their young. Hanging flower baskets are especially attractive, since they're usually out of reach of cats. You can make nesting sites more hospitable by being careful about how and when you water so you don't blast birds and eggs out of the nest.

After the chicks have fledged, take time to study the nests you find. Sometimes they're held together with spider silk and lichens (both shed water), and often they're camouflaged with bits of leaves or twine that make them seem to disappear. Birds that breed early in the season often feather nests with down plucked from their own breasts for insulation, and to help them warm eggs better by direct contact with their skin. Many kinds of birds line nests with leaves that repel parasites. There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.

Birds often use the same next two or three times during the season, so wait until summer's end if you want to collect a nest for display. (And before you bring it indoors, put it in a plastic bag and zap it in a microwave oven for a minute to kill the parasites that have probably built up over the course of the season.) Some nests—those of bald eagles come to mind—can weigh hundreds or thousands of pounds and are used for decades. There is a record of a white stork's nest that was in repeated use for hundreds of years.

To learn more, pick up a copy of Peterson's Field Guide to Wester Birds' Nests, or its companion volume for Birds' Nests East of the Mississippi River. Both are by Hal Harrison, published by Houghton Mifflin. Either book will give you fresh eyes for the really wonderful role your garden plays in the environment at large.

To learn more about planting for birds and butterflies, click here.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

In the post just above this one, I mention how Scott Calhoun likes to use old desert spoon or century plant stalks as his building blocks to make nesting quarters for native bees.  And I like that approach, especially for the casual garden.

If your garden is more formal, though, you might prefer Tucson garden designer Greg Corman's approach.  He designs bee nesting quarters that double as art.  Two examples are shown below.  Corman uses old pieces of wood found at salvage yards and with the help of metal artist Tidhar Ozeri installs them in steel frameworks.  (Usually the steel is recycled as well.)  For more examples, see Corman's website.