The Avant-Garden Shop: Your Garden & Bird Store

Attracting Hummingbirds and Orioles

  Sweets for the Sweet In May, we begin to see the arrival of hummingbirds, orioles and warblers. The beautiful but elusive warblers are generally happy within the safe cover of trees to provide a healthy diet of insects, but hummingbirds and orioles will come to gardens and feeders if we provide what they love … Read more

GARDEN GATE: Episode 277 – The Importance of a Clean Feeder (Oct 13, 2023)

It’s the time of year when we’re seeing a lot of different birds migrating through the area. Some are heading south from here, some coming from the north to our feeders for winter, or simply passing through. It’s really important to have good quality seed, and to make sure your feeders are clean. Birds don’t … Read more

Garden Tips: Avian Influenza (a.k.a. Bird Flu or H5N1)

Well, Avian Influenza is back in the news. Here, I try to provide some insight that might help answer the question… “Should I keep feeding birds or shut down my feeder?” The quick takeaway? It seems to be ok to keep your feeders running as long as you: aren’t on or near a farm with … Read more

GARDEN GATE: Episode 254 – Attracting Finches & Grosbeaks (Nov 18, 2022)

A Spruce Budworm outbreak in northern areas meant a lot of food for Evening Grosbeaks and Purple Finches this year. That, coupled with a smaller mast (seed and nut) crop, means there are more individuals of these species than there is food to support them, so many will move father south than usual this winter … Read more

All that Glitters IS Gold

American Goldfinches are the latest-breeding songbird species in this area. They molt their feathers a second time in the summer, which is unusual for most bird species and leads to increasingly bright colours as the season progresses. Their song is a cheerful musical babbling, and their flight call – po-ta-to chip! po-ta-to chip! – is … Read more

Garden Gate: Episode 193 – Supply and demand (July 3rd 2020)

    We’ve been busier than ever as have similar shops across North America. Just about everyone is putting up bird feeders and enjoying this new very relaxing hobby! Because we’ve all be so busy with this hobby some products are currently in very limited supply. Warehouses have been shut down and are just now … Read more

Garden Tips: Squirrels at Your Bird Feeder

Keeping squirrels away from feeders can be a constant effort. They eat a lot of seed, which makes maintaining your feeder more costly. They also dominate the feeder, scaring the birds we want to attract away. There’s another good reason to reduce squirrel and chipmunk access to your bird seed: they eat bird eggs and … Read more

Garden Gate: Episode 9 – The Peterborough Garden Show

OL_Ptbo Garden Show Logo smallCHEX TV air date: Fri. Apr. 5th, 2013

Click here to watch this episode of?The Garden Gate.

Rachel Burrows, chair of the Peterborough Garden Show was our guest. We discussed the garden show which is held the second weekend in April each year at the Evinrude Centre in Peterborough. Rachel gave us information on this very successful gardening show which began in 2000.

 

The 5 o’clock show, November 11th, 2012, A visit to The Avant-Garden Shop

5 o'clock showTheresa Kazuba from CHEX TV visited The Avant-Garden Shop in late 2012 to learn more about backyard bird feeding and bird watching.? Special guest Drew Monkman also joined us for a segment of the program.

Well worth watching if you’d like to learn more about choosing the right bird food, quality bird feeders and even a little about the local Blue Bird population.

This video is a little longer than the others but can be seen here.

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