Three practical things I do to make my yard more wildlife-friendly

This is a super-practical post with lots of pictures and video!

I’m going to tell you about three things I do to enhance the friendliness of my home and garden for wildlife.

Why it matters: Suburbia has caused habitat destruction. Part of our environmental crisis is a biodiversity crisis. We are simply putting too much pressure on wildlife. Suburbia has historically been a place where we want to keep the wild out, and the expansion of suburbia means that animals have nowhere to go. In place of the unlikely event that we turn suburbia back over to nature, we need to learn to share better and to consider the lives of our wild brothers and sisters.

Three tactics for blooming your burb

ONE

Install a water feature. It can be small or large, but the purpose should be oriented to hosting and supporting wildlife. So, no chemical filled pools, though you should maintain it to keep mosquito populations down.

There are a ton of ways to make a pond and you can google to see what works for you. I just wanted a small, low-maintenance feature in my front yard (not in the backyard because of my dogs!) that would host frogs and could be a water source for insects and whatever wildlife happens by.

I used two old metal round barbecue pieces (like a Weber grill), lined with pond fabric to make mine. I dug a hole, put the barbecues next to each other, and lined them. I covered the edges with soil and rocks as best I could. I put water-loving plants around the edges and into the pond. If I had to do it over again, I’d dig deeper so that the pond fabric doesn’t show, but I’ve learned to live with it. I put a birdbath in the middle, and inexpensive solar pumps on each side to aerate the pond.

I wash the birdbath out periodically with less than a tablespoon of bleach and a brush.

The birdbath before cleaning

The birdbath after cleaning

I use this stuff to kill mosquito larvae, but as you’ll see, I have some frog friends that are also keeping mosquito populations down

Here’s a video sampling of what goes on at this little pond both day and night. Ironically, I don’t have any video of the deer, which are some of the most frequent nighttime guests! Also, let me just say that raccoons often get a bad rap for being destructive, but note how polite Raccoon is when she knocks over the birdbath.

TWO

Leave some deadwood around. I guess I can speculate that most suburbanites remove deadwood because they think of it as messy and maybe as evidence that you’re a sloppy, uncaring homeowner. I prefer to leave standing deadwood and piles of deadwood because they host insects and birds. Even the parts of deadwood that we can’t see support a healthy soil life, including amazing mycorrhizal fungi. (Though it’s a disputed topic, some scientists have theorized that trees in communities (i.e., forests) communicate with each other through mycorrhizal networks. A thoroughly enjoyable podcast on the subject is “From Tree to Shining Tree.”)

THREE

Put decals on your windows if you get bird strikes. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimates that every year, up to one billion birds die from bird strikes. Even if it seems like the bird is only stunned, the Blueridge Wildlife Center (which does an amazing job educating the public) says:

Studies now show that any bird known to have collided with a window be evaluated by a rehabilitator.

I used to get bird strikes all the time because I live in a house that has huge picture windows on both the west and east sides. I finally got wise and put clings on my windows. There are so many different kinds of clings to choose from. I have some that have colors and others that are more transparent. This has dramatically reduced the number of bird strikes. While not at zero, when a bird has hit my window this season, it’s more like it brushes the window, and I’m thinking that they see the decals soon enough that they’re able to pull back in time.

BONUS TACTIC

Kill yer lawn…which is what I’m off to do now. I have a huge new perennial bed in the works (that’s a link to a video on my Instagram) and I’ll be spending the rest of the day covering lawn with a heavyweight brown paper and a soil/compost mix. Plants are already ordered, and I’ll plant them this fall!

Have a great week and, as always, share your ideas or questions in the comments!