Habitat Gardening
Eastern Kingfisher by Holly Elderbusch
Make a Difference in Your Own Backyard!
The news about current global environmental issues can be overwhelming. But did you know that you can make a positive impact on the world around you with the choices you make in your own backyard? If you have a garden, a yard, or even a small porch or balcony, the choices you make can help to contribute to the survival of birds and other species. How? You can choose plants native to our area of the country, which are vital to the survival of our native birds and other wildlife.
Native plants support native butterflies, bees, moths, and other insects, which in turn support our native birds. The native plants you choose can provide shelter and nest-building materials, as well as food in the form of berries, seeds, and nectar. By making informed choices and thinking about gardening in a new way, with new goals and new aesthetics, you can make a difference in the world right in your own backyard!
Getting Started
First, don’t be overwhelmed! Transitioning to Habitat Gardening takes time. The first thing you can do is start adding native plants that are beneficial to birds, insects and other wildlife.
We’ve compiled a vast list of Plants for Habitat Gardening including trees (large + small), shrubs, perennials + grasses, and vines.
Learn from our Experts
Ready to take it to the next level? Come join us, learn more, and practice what you’ve learned, guided by our experts.
During our volunteer sessions, you’ll Learn about cultivating native plants, habitat gardening techniques and best practices, as well as invasive plant identification and removal.
Did you know?
In addition to adding native plants, there are five other things you can start doing today; with time, you will be amazed at the life you can bring into your yard!
REDUCE LAWN
This is one of the most important things suburban gardeners can do. Lawns are made up of non-native plants, and they offer almost no ecological value, and what’s more, they require lots of resources of fertilizer, water, and time. They produce air and water pollution from fertilizer, pesticides, and emissions from mowing and blowing.
Expand your plantings, think of gardening less in horizontal than in vertical terms: plant in layers, from ground-hugging plants to taller plants and grasses, to shrubs, to understory trees, to canopy trees. Imagine your house as the center of a forest clearing, with meadow around it, rising to edge plants and trees. Lawn should be just the jumping-off point, the bland background to the exciting diversity of life and color that is your habitat garden. For the lawn that remains, if any does, you can also eliminate the need to fertilize, at all, by introducing white clover, which is not native, but which is both beneficial for pollinators and nitrogen-fixing, so it takes fertilizer right out of the air and makes it available for the lawn grasses next to it.
Mow less often, no lower than 3½ inches, and mulch the clippings into the lawn. Irrigate only when you absolutely have to, and don’t use pesticides.
EMBRACE UNTIDINESS
Despite all the magazine articles, your garden is not an extension of your house. You don’t need to clean it: in many ways, a habitat garden is self-maintaining. Leave your leaves, as much as you can, where they fall under trees and into flowerbeds and shrubberies. When you must rake them, tuck them into piles in the far corners of your garden, to incorporate later into your compost pile or simply to allow to decompose into mulch that you can spread in your garden beds.
Forests have leaf litter, dead logs and piles of sticks, all the fertile regeneration that goes with decomposition. A fallen tree becomes food for fungi and insects. As the tree decomposes, nutrients are recycled into the soil, while innumerable insects become, in turn, food for birds and other animals. It’s one of the most productive habitats there is, so don’t tidy away your dead wood. Leave standing dead trees, if you can safely do so, for use by cavity nesters. The most notable group of wood users in snags are the primary cavity nesters, wood-peckers and nuthatches, that excavate nest cavities in the decayed wood of standing trees. When they leave, other birds and mammals are waiting in line as tenants. These structures are used for foraging, nesting, denning, roosting, and resting, often serving multiple squatters simultaneously.
USE LIVE PLANTS + LEAVES INSTEAD OF MULCH UNDER TREES + SHRUBS
Wood chips work—they suppress weeds—but they do very little for wildlife. Butterflies can’t overwinter in them, as they can in leaves. Birds can’t rootle around in them, looking for bugs, because there aren’t many bugs there. Bees can’t nest in them (70% of native bee species nest in the ground, spending 11 months of the year there). Leave some dirt bare, especially on south-facing slopes.
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LEAVE YOUR GARDEN MESSY IN THE FALL
Many scores of beneficial insects, like ladybugs and predatory wasps, as well as native bees, butterfly chrysalises, eggs, and even butterflies themselves, overwinter in leaves on the ground, on perennial stems and in perennial plant crowns, and tidying away all that plant material will kill them or leave them with nowhere to shelter. Wait well into spring to remove them—until temperatures average in the 50s—and even then cut the perennial stems of wild bergamot, asters, goldenrods, yellow coneflower, echinacea, and tall coreopsis back to 12-18” rather than to the ground, since their hollow stems can provide nesting sites for bees.
PROVIDE A WATER SOURCE
Anything from a birdbath to a waterfall to a pond can be used to attract birds and other wildlife. The sound of water in itself attracts birds. People like it, too. If you have or put in a pond, make sure there is a slope for birds to gain access to the water, preferably a flat area of pebbles just at the surface edge for insects, and sufficient aeration. If it is deep enough to accommodate fish, the ecological balance will be enriched, as well. Celebrate any wetland you have, by planting water-loving plants that will attract other species of pollinators, butterflies, and birds than those of different habitats.