Today’s brides and grooms want their friends and family to have a fabulous time during the wedding weekend, and they’re looking for fun and affordable activities that appeal to all ages. While some of our Northern New Jersey customers take their out-of-towners to New York City or to Hoboken for a day of touring, many more would rather skip the travel prices and stay local. Which makes The Farm a fabulous stop on the ‘staycation weekend’ itinerary. Kids can visit with our menagerie, couples can sit by the lake and watch the swans, and who says you have to go to the Short Hills Mall for a day of shopping? When you plan a day of shopping at The Farm, everyone gets to pick out garden gifts like ceramic plant IDs, pretty pottery, mini stone figures, stylish garden gloves and other goodies that remind them for a long time of your wonderful wedding weekend.

You don’t have to be the bride and groom to plan this outing. So many wedding guests play host to visiting friends and family while the bride, groom and their circle busily put the finishing touches on their wedding celebrations, and the local outing is a top draw for those who have 15 or so in their visiting group. A morning spent walking through the gardens is a morning well-spent and a fine look at the best of The Garden State’s true beauty.

There’s no need for a guided tour. Encourage your guests to wander at will, and everyone meets back at the entrance at a set time, after which you can all go back to your place, and your gardens, for an afternoon’s cookout. The outing is free to you – which is welcome news to hosts of big groups – everyone gets their shopping on, and the garden splendor at the Farm puts everyone in a delightful mood for the rest of the weekend’s events.

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

When you add garden accents of birdfeeders and birdbaths — and many types of organic flowers and plants – to your property, you invite New Jersey’s birds to bring their spectacular colors and pleasing songs to you. It’s a gift both you to and to the birds, since you’re joining our Morris County community’s circle of birdwatchers help our NJ native avian species make it through the winter. It’s a cold one out there this winter, and birds need a reliable food source. When they find it at your property, they reward you with their beauty.

I personally love it when cardinals and red-headed woodpeckers brighten my view on these dark winter days, and their ability to mingle with other birds, taking turns on the feeding ledge, is quite impressive. The birds get along better, and are more polite, than some people we know!

No matter where you live in New Jersey, from our local Chatham neighborhood to nearby Morristown, Madison, Florham Park and East Hanover to southern points like Princeton, Short Hills and more, you’re treated to New Jersey’s resident birds. I wanted to know more about what I was seeing, so I looked up on Wikipedia a list of birds native to New Jersey. Did you know that we’re home to two tropicbirds, usually native to tropical islands? Or that we’re home to 41 different species of warblers? 24 species of sparrows?

With these FYIs in hand, I’m even more excited whenever doves land on my birdfeeder or garden accent birdbath, since I now know more about them. Specifically, New Jersey is home to 7 different species of doves, most of which I’ve hosted on my front lawn! In addition to the mourning dove and common ground-dove you’ve seen a million times, we’re home to the Eurasian Collared Dove and the White-winged Dove.

Like so many of my Morristown neighbors, I’m not a fan of woodpeckers pecking on my house, but I am a fan of the ‘you live in the most beautiful place in the world’ sound as they peck on the trees in our nearby woods. Fascinatingly, we have 10 New Jersey species of woodpeckers, including the red-headed woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, the red-cockaded woodpecker, the black-backed woodpecker, the American three-toed woodpecker [I’m dying to see this one!], the pileated woodpecker, and one that always reminds me of my childhood in East Hanover, a bird name that struck my child self as silly: the yellow-bellied sapsucker. For a long time, I thought that was a made-up name from a cartoon, but it’s a real bird native to New Jersey. And if I ever see one, it’ll make my day.