N.J. BACK YARD A HUMMINGBIRD HAVEN.

Byline: Amy Sancetta Associated Press 

Jack Aprill, a 69-year-old naturalist, entrepreneur, gardener, birder and part-time philosopher, knows his hummingbirds.

``First off,'' he says, ``hummingbirds hate each other. The males hate the females; the females hate the males; the parents hate the babies, and the babies hate each other.

``If you understand the hummingbirds, you'll treat them better.''

Aprill should know. He has been observing the diminutive birds for nearly two decades in his backyard floral gardens called Leaming's Run here in Swainton.

Open to the public since 1978, Leaming's Run is the largest annual garden in the United States. Its gardens of more than 20,000 annual flowers and plants, which wind through 30 acres of south Jersey pine barrens and wetlands, is blooming and open for visitors from May through mid-October.

When Aprill bought the property, it was an untamed woods that sat over a 60-acre underground lake. In the early 1970s, he began work on the gardens - clearing paths, digging several ponds, testing the soil and experimenting with a wide variety of annuals.

Six years later, the gardens were ready for the public to see.

``Basically, what we've done is open up our back yard to visitors,'' explains Aprill's son, Gregg, the garden's sole groundskeeper.

``All of our plants, we started from seeds. Ninety-eight percent of our plants are annuals, and everything that's not an annual is treated like one.''

The elder Aprill is proud of his ``lazy gardener'' gardens.

In these gardens, Aprill explains, ``We have never fertilized, never weeded, never hoed and never spent 1 cent on mulch.''

The plantings thrive on a mulching of fresh grass clippings, naturally loaded with nitrates, and an occasional sprinkling when Mother Nature won't cooperate with sufficient rainfall.

As the summer progresses, all those blooming blossoms bring not only daily visitors, but masses of hummingbirds, drawn to the nectar and insects found in the blossoms of salvia and cardinal flower, one of the few perennials found on the property.

Babies emerge from their nests in late July and have four to six weeks to gain enough weight to make the long migration to South America. Late August and early September find the hummingbirds heading south through New Jersey.

Jo Carrington and her husband,Don, have been faithfully making the trip to Leaming's Run from their home in Mercerville, N.J., every August for the past 10 years.

``It takes over two hours to get here,'' Jo Carrington says with a smile, ``but it's worth it. The first time we came over 10 years ago, we came for the flowers. Now we come mostly for the hummingbirds. They're magical.''

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Photo: A hummingbird feasts on a cardinal plant at Leaming' s Run gardens in Swainton, N.J.

Amy Sancetta/Associated Press