There’s always a moment of surprise when you’re with Lillian and Don Stokes. On a recent visit to the back yard of the nation’s best-selling nature writers, the moment occurred when a large hawk arched overhead and landed in a nearby tree. The Stokeses responded with the excitement of predators spotting their quarry. Lillian, 53, nailed the ID: “It’s a Cooper’s hawk! Female!”
Don, 50, began the tutorial: “That’s an unusual hawk in that it eats other birds . . .”
“Notice how quiet it is,” injected Lillian. The background twittering of young goldfinches had indeed stopped.
As hosts of the country’s first weekly TV show about bird-watching, the Stokeses will bring their surprises into living rooms when “BirdWatch with Don and Lillian Stokes” appears on PBS stations throughout the country.
It may well be the most spontaneous nature show on television. You could film for years and never capture a wild mountain lion on tape, so some filmmakers trap animals in enclosures and fake the drama. But birds are all around us. So, although the Stokeses work with a script they write, unexpected birds are always popping up while the TV camera is rolling: a golden eagle zooming overhead while they are filming hummingbirds in Medeira Canyon in Arizona; a startled swallowtail kite taking flight while they’re filming wood storks in the Everglades. The Stokeses live for these moments and shout and point with more genuine enthusiasm than most game-show contestants who hit the jackpot.
Before moving on to birding hot spots around the country, each of the first 13 “BirdWatch” episodes begins with a segment in the Stokeses’ own 5-acre Carlisle back yard, where they show how to entice birds to visit by adding birdhouses, feeders, water, and berry-producing shrubs.
But creating a garden that’s pleasing both to birds and to people is harder than it sounds. Birds like messy tangles of briars, dead or dying trees full of tasty insects, and wild shrubs that put energy into berry rather than flower production. Indeed, when I met the couple nine years ago, this was the kind of yard the Stokeses had. I remember well how they told me that cardinals loved the nutritious taste of young briars, this to explain the thicket of bull briars that skirted their modest lawn. At the other end of a woodland had been a meadow dotted with birdhouses on posts. It was charming — for people who are into birds instead of gardening. And it worked. In almost two decades here together, the Stokeses have attracted 140 species, with 40 types staying to nest.
But then the Stokeses got bitten by the gardening bug. They decided they wanted a pretty, formal garden — without sacrificing the birds.
So on a recent visit I was surprised by an 8-foot-wide, 400-foot-long gravel walk leading from the house to the meadow, from which rose a modern Asian-inspired garden house and perennial beds within squares of mortared stonework. The woods had been cut back and a wide bridge with sculptured ducks now forded the wetlands.
The axis of straight lines suggested 18th-century formalism more than 20th-century nature preserve. The four-sided garden house in the middle of the new garden looked out squarely on four distinct views: the grand promenade to the distant house to the north; a less distant but still spacious view of an open lawn edged with a tall grass meadow and wild shrubs to the south; four raised perennial beds flanking another formal path to the east; a nearby burbling fountain intimately enclosed by a hemlock hedge to the west.
“Each view is totally different. The joy we get here is immeasurable,” said Lillian blissfully, as she leaned back into her cushioned garden-house chair.
If you took down all the birdhouses, a visitor wouldn’t realize that this was a landscape that had anything to do with birds.
Certainly the Stokeses, who have a total of 3 million copies of their 21 books in print, jumped into landscaping with the thorough, fact-based enthusiasm they bring to every project. That meant studying garden history, traveling to Europe to visit gardens for ideas, and auditioning a zillion plants. “When we do something, we delve deeply,” said Lillian, who met her husband 18 years ago when she took his class on bird behavior for the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
Landscape designer Roger Kallstrom of Lexington designed the hardscape while environmental designer Deb Howard of Newton helped Lillian decide the plantings.
It’s all a balancing act, the yin and yang of birds’ needs and people’s desires, of formal beauty and low maintenance.
For instance the Stokeses planted a small orchard of dwarf crab apples such as Malus Sargentii with beautiful flowers attractive to both people and orioles (which drink their nectar). In winter the trees have tiny decorative red crab apples that look Christmassy to people — and tasty to birds.
The hemlock hedge creates a backdrop for a fountain, but also gives birds seeds, shelter, and nesting sites near water.
“Hummingbirds love any color — as long as it’s red!” explained Lillian as she led a tour through flower beds glowing with red monarda, vermillion cardinal flowers, verbena, and salvia.
The vast lawn is also “bird friendly,” a green tapestry of bent grass interspersed with plaintain, hawkweed, and dandelions that produces seeds while the ground produces earthworms.
Though the Stokeses hire a lawn service to mow, no chemicals are applied. And they do all the rest of the maintenance themselves. After a big two-week, full-time push in April when they plant and divide, they say they spend only about an hour a week on garden chores.
One reason is that they mulch everything with 3 inches of hemlock bark in April. (But put mulch between plants, not up against stems.) The mulch prevents weeds and helps keep the soil moist so the Stokeses don’t have to water.
Their other tactic is selecting tough, drought-tolerant plants. “They don’t stay if they’re fussy. We’re too busy!” said Don.
