We Garden for Wildlife

“We garden for wildlife” is an often repeated phrase as my husband, John, and I go about chores on our little bit of reforesting Wake County farmland. The National Wildlife Federation created the motto for its Certified Wildlife Habitat program, an initiative to publicize the critical need for sharing the spaces in which we live and work with other species.

Sometimes, we are filled with wonder as we watch a pair of robins peck at the edges of the stream that flows into our little garden pond, gathering moss for nests. At other times, John’s voice takes a sardonic tone as he reminds me, “We garden for wildlife,” while I’m weeping over a crop of daylily buds lost to foraging deer.

How it began

Creating a habitat garden wasn’t our goal when we moved here 31 years ago. A demanding job and a two-sport teenage musician ensured I wasn’t gardening at all then. It was John who first set out to take a backyard of scraggly maple, pine and sweetgum trees underplanted with nonnative azaleas and a few bulbs and transform it into a garden.

Following all the best gardening advice, he waited a full year to see what would emerge (very little) before adding more than a few foxgloves, hostas, and euonymus brought from our former gardens. Unfortunately, the first spring saw the few things that did come up, including his beloved hostas, promptly and completely devoured by slugs. We tried all the recommended remedies one by one until, by the second spring, slug bait in little dogproof boxes seemed to work. Having made progress on that battlefront, he turned to the Asian lace bug that infested our evergreen azaleas.

The key to habitat gardening really is doing less.

Being part of the Mother Earth News generation, we were always somewhat leery of pesticides, and even in those early days, we tried to limit their use to the direst situations. The recommendation for lace bugs was a product named Cygon, now considered dangerous and no longer legally for sale in the U.S. At the time, it took only the fumes from one spraying for me to urge John not to continue. We resolved to live with the lace bugs, and he treated the azaleas to a layer of compost that was free for the shoveling at an area horse facility. 

By year three, what had started as a slow trickle of new plants into John’s garden had risen to a steady stream. Many of those newcomers happened to be plants native to the Southeast, but it was pure aesthetics and a goal to have a year-round garden with flowers that drove his choices. The increase in the number and variety of birds in the garden was a welcome bonus.

Where I Came In

For some time, my favorite form of stress relief had been pulling the English ivy that covered one side of our front yard and continued into the wooded patch alongside and behind our house. In the process, I uncovered two wonderful native groundcovers: running cedar and partridgeberry. The more ivy I removed, the more the groundcovers flourished.

I was finding more time for the garden, and it was becoming increasingly clear the backyard was large enough to hold only one vision, so John and I agreed the front yard would be my domain, while he continued to have the final say about all things located inside the back fence.

My initial goal was to create a front yard requiring minimal care. Emphasizing native plants was a logical step toward my goal. Perhaps equally important from a habitat point of view was a decision to leave areas under trees and shrubs covered with leaf liner and debris. We create and maintain paths but let the leaves fall in the beds and stay.

What Changed

The transformation of our property from a typical suburban backyard into a wildlife habitat and native plant refuge didn’t occur overnight. It was much more an evolutionary than a radical change, both for the garden and the gardeners.

After John fed compost to the azaleas, they grew more, and over time, we noticed fewer lace bugs. When Hurricane Fran left behind lots of compost at the city landfill, we hauled truckloads home to the garden. Plants that had languished for years began to thrive. The steady increase in the number and variety of plants brought us more butterflies and other pollinators.

Creating a small pond gave us frogs and dragonflies. First reducing, then eliminating pesticides resulted in abundant toads, whom we thank daily for the absence of slugs in the garden. Even the leaf litter has benefits, providing a home for bright green anoles, friendly little lizards who always seem interested in what we’re doing.

Free Advice

I’m sometimes envious of the many books and websites now available for advice on habitat gardening. While I recommend these wonderful resources, I wonder if the sheer volume of information might be intimidating to some. Further, some writers’ lists of “you must do this” and “you mustn’t do that” are so long that one might be convinced that creating a habitat garden is far too complex to undertake.

For anyone so discouraged, I have a simple solution: do less. It may seem unlikely, but the key to habitat gardening really is doing less. First and foremost, reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides and other chemicals. This single action is the first step toward creating a healthy, balanced plant community where infestations and disease outbreaks are rare. Second, do less raking, cleaning, and cutting back. A bit of mess and leaf litter can provide winter homes for beneficial insects, anoles, and others who will rid your garden of pests come spring.

If you must do more, then increase the number and variety of native trees, shrubs, and flowers in your garden. If you do these things, you may find you’ve become a habitat gardener, even if you didn’t set out to be one.