Water

The garden for wildlife needs to have a water source. There are plenty of places to get bird baths, but if you want to have the water circulate you need power. Circulating the water is supposed to make it more attractive to birds. It also helps prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the standing water and it sounds nice when you're sitting nearby. Since I don’t have electricity in the area I want to put bird baths/fountains, I’m currently on the hunt for a reasonably priced solar bird bath that gets good reviews. Unfortunately, they are hard to find in stores so online it is. Birdbaths.com is one of many sites I've found so far.

Organic Landscapers

In New York and Connecticut you can find certified organic landscapers through The Grassroots Healthy Law Program and Neighborhood Network. I will say that if you go organic you will get some crab grass, but I don’t think it’s such a big deal. Keeping pesticides and chemicals out of the water supply and out of your house (since you, your kids or your pets will track them indoors) is worth the price of some crab grass.

Finding Plants

NWF partnered with North Creek Nurseries and Prides Corner Farms to create the American Beauties™ collection of native plants. These are sold at garden centers from New England to the Mid-Atlantic. You can enter your zip code on the site and get a list of nurseries that carry these plants in your area. However, I’ve also found these plants at other nurseries not on the list. These other nurseries might just have a few choices instead of a broad selection. You can also search Google for native plants in your area or actually go to the bookstore or library and flip through books on gardening in your area.

Here are some of my favorites:

Shrubs - I’m a fan of anything in the ilex family (aka hollies). Many varieties are evergreen so they look good year around and also get berries which are great for the birds (I have different varieties that get black, red or yellow berries.)

Perennials – sedums, coneflowers and coreopsis. They are hardy plants and also attract lots of butterflies and bees.

Trees – River Birch. This tree has beautiful paper like bark that peels and flakes away. I just planted it in the backyard and it looks great. It’s a native tree.

Landscape Plans

Lots of sites have landscape plans you can look at for inspiration and advice. I got inspiration and sample plans from several sites including: American Beauties nursery, Monrovia and HGTV.

You can also take this quiz and find out your Garden Style. This didn’t work that well for me because depending on my mood I could answers the questions differently and get a different result. I think it’s also because I can find something to like or dislike within each style.

Garden for Wildlife

The National Wildlife Federation promotes the Garden for Wildlife. The idea is to use native plants which require less maintenance (less water, no chemicals, etc.) and also attract native wildlife. It’s not always easy to do this in the suburbs where everyone expects their neighbor to have a certain kind of yard and the nurseries all seem to sell the same plants with little variety. Personally, I would love to get rid of my entire front lawn. However, since that would look strange in my neighborhood, I got rid of half the lawn and planted an assortment of trees, shrubs and perennials. Not every plant is native, but they are all hardy plants accustomed to the local climate and soil.

Inspiration

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." John Muir

I love nature and this blog is inspired by my efforts to bring a little more nature to my suburban yard.