A great way to get a wide variety of birds to your bird feeding station is to offer a variety of bird food specific to each bird. For example, Cardinals like safflower seed but not a lot of other birds do. Cardinals are also shy, so it’s nice to have a bird feeder suited to … Read more
Not everyone realizes that birds love peanuts! Especially Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and Chickadees. Feeding peanuts and suet is especially important in the winter and the birds get lots of energy from these foods! The fat helps them to stay warm and survive long winter nights. Suet, peanuts both hulled and shelled are favourites. When … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Friday Nov. 10th, 2017 Garden Gate airs bi-weekly on CHEX TV. Fridays at 8am and 5pm, and the following Monday at 12:30pm Local photographer and filmmaker Rodney Fuentes joins me on this episode with a few tips on photographing birds. You need a good SLR camera but nothing extremely complicated or expensive … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Nov. 2, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online We carry a lot of beautiful Canadian made wall and garden art in the shop. So much, that it can often be difficult to decide what would look best! Maybe you have high cathedral ceilings and a large empty wall going up … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Oct. 13th, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online. On this episode my guest is Simon Tapper a student at Trent University. Simon is studying many different birds in the swallow family. Swallows prefer nesting boxes located in open fields on tall posts. They mainly eat flying insects. We’ve noticed fewer … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Friday Sept. 29th, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online My guest on this episode of The Garden Gate is Trent University student, Simon Tapper, and we’re talking about the American Goldfinch. The goldfinch loves the seeds of Echinacea (Purple coneflower), grasses such as Big Blue stem, Rudbeckia (Black eyed susan). … Read more
Animal House Creations is the business of woodworker and outdoor enthusiast Gary Cowie. Gary has developed shelter designs for cavity nesting animals, including bats, bees, bluebirds, butterflies, owls, and eastern grey squirrels. Gary has sold his hand-crafted houses at The Avant Garden Shop since 2012. They are a big hit! The construction of Gary’s products … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Sept. 15th, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online. Often times people come into the shop with a goal in mind. “How do I attract cardinals?” They are such beautiful birds we can certainly understand the desire! Well, we can help! I usually begin by asking a few questions to establish … Read more
Nawal Motawi is the founder and principal designer of Motawi Tileworks of Ann Arbor, Michigan. With her team of designers and craftspeople she created hand-made, historically-informed art tile for distinctive installations and as art pieces. Motawi Tileworks was started in 1992. After Nawal studied ceramics and figure sculpture in art school, she took a job … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Friday Sept. 1st Click link to watch this episode on our YouTube channel Cleaning your bird feeders is very important to keep your birds healthy and coming back for more. Tune into this episode or read further to learn more about what you should be doing! Cleaning your bird feeders Moldy or … Read more