Who Do You Want to Attract to your Garden?
American bumblebee on ironweed, Monarch butterfly on Joe Pye weed, ruby-throated hummingbird nectaring bee balm, cedar waxwings, common five-lined skink, feather-legged scoliid wasp, gray foxes, and possum.
Food and Water
Native Plants are the Foundation
No matter what sort of wildlife you are hoping to attract, native plants are key to supporting the web of life. Native plants welcome pollinators, including moths and butterflies.
The adults eat nectar and pollen.
To the adult females, native plant leaves smell like a safe place to lay eggs. They check with their antennae, their feet, and their ovipostors — the tip of the tail used to lay eggs.
For newly hatched caterpillars, native plant leaves taste safe and yummy.
The caterpillars evolved to handle the self-defense toxins in native-plant leaves. They can live to grow up and fly!
Which Native Plants? Keystone Plants!
Keystone plants are essential for supporting the local foodweb like the keystone in a Roman arch provides stability to the other stones. Keystone plants vary by ecoregion, but whatever the plants are for a particular area, their impact is immense. Dr. Doug Tallamy and his team found that 14% of native plants support 90% of the butterflies and moths. Horticulturalist Jarrod Fowler found that between 15 and 60% of native bees are pollen specialists who rely on just 40% of native plants. In the US, visit nativeplantfinder.nwf.org to find the keystone plants in your zipcode.
In my area, goldenrod is a top keystone perennial, hosting 102 moths and butterfly species.
Other keystone perennials include hibiscus, Joe Pye Weed, mountain mint, and ironweed.
Keystone shrubs can be lower maintenance and even more welcoming. For example, cherries like this choke cherry host 362 insects here.
Blueberry bushes host 237 species. Both feed the birds too.
This red maple is a top keystone tree, hosting 254 species. Pines host 232 species, ashes 121, and dogwoods 101.
Where Do You Grow All These Plants?
Reduce your lawn, particularly under any native trees. This gives caterpillars a soft place to land so they can continue their life cycle.
I got rid of all my lawn, but any shift you make is an improvement. Lawn is essentially a dead zone for life and lawn grass stores very little carbon.
Why Moths and Butterflies?
Fabulous on their own, moth and butterfly caterpillars are essential food for baby birds.
Even most seed-eating birds feed their babies caterpillars. The soft bodies make good baby-bird food.
Provide Other Food
Instead of hanging bird feeders, I grow plants that produce berries and seeds. Here, a crow and robin eat cherry-laurel fruit, a goldfinch eats black-eyed susan seeds, and a cedar waxwing eats yaupon holly berries.
Leave dead wood where you can safely for carpenter bees and carpenter ants and other wood-boring insects. Woodpeckers eat the insects that eat wood.
Provide Water
A simple birdbath will give you the most enjoyment for the least money and energy as you start a wildlife garden.
Birds also enjoy a bigger water feature and running water.
Safe
Provide Shelter
Doing less can help your wildlife. Leave dried stems for native bees to nest in. Leave your leaves where they fall. If you need to, rake them gently into flower beds and under trees. They provide food and habitat for many beneficial insects.
Shrubs, rocks, and brush piles all provide habitat.
Keep it Dark
Light at night confuses insects and disrupts all sorts of biological systems, including in humans. Here’s the current evidence for best lighting practices. Use only the light you need, aimed where you need it, and no brighter than does the job. Use motion detectors or timers to light only when needed and choose LEDs or bulbs that produce warm-colored light.
We have downward-facing lights, with the ones in front on timers. We turn on the ones in back as needed.
Don’t Spray Poisons
Spraying for mosquitoes or other pests kills caterpillars and other beneficial insects. It’s not healthy for kids or pets either.
How to Avoid Mosquito Bites
Mosquitoes need standing water to breed. At least twice a week, change water in your bird baths and empty water from plant saucers, etc. Make your water move if you can.
Encourage mosquito eaters, like birds, frogs, dragonflies, frogs, and lizards.In North Carolina, carnivorous pitcher plants eat mosquitoes and other bugs too.
Make a mosquito bucket aka a Bucket of Doom. Fill a bucket half-full of water. Add a handful of leaves, straw, or grass clippings to a bucket. Add 1/4 of a mosquito dunk, which has a bacteria deadly to mosquitoes. Cover the bucket with chicken wire or a screen that has large holes so the mosquitoes can get in but chipmunks and dogs can’t. Put in a shady, damp area away from your house.
Wear clothes that cover bare skin.
Run a fan when sitting outside. Mosquitoes can’t fly in the breeze.
If you are on the move, using coconut soap may be enough to hide you from mosquitoes. If it’s not, then use a safe repellent on yourself.
How to Avoid Lyme Disease
Ticks love to feed on small mammals and lizards, especially skinks. Lizards are not good hosts for passing on Lyme Disease, so welcoming them helps keep you safe.
Enjoy your Unique Garden!
Maybe you want it to be strange and fierce.
Maybe you prefer furry: chipmunk, white-tailed deer, raccoon, gray fox, and Eastern cottontail rabbit.
Maybe you just love flowers and don’t mind that the wildlife loves them too.
Whatever your reason, you can be an important part of supporting the diverse and fascinating web of life on our planet.