Add Life to Your Landscape

Well-designed native landscapes create eye appeal and attract watchable wildlife to your yard. Wildlife species evolved with their favorite native plant species and prefer them for food and shelter. For design ideas, take a look at these diagrams and adapt them to fit your needs. While your space may be smaller or larger, the plant palette for attracting certain species of wildlife remains the same.

Finch Feast

The finch feast is a wildlife-themed garden that concentrates on fruiting trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses with seed heads. Add a birdhouse, birdbath, or feeder for even more attraction.

Butterfly Berm

The butterfly berm is an easy family project with colorful, nectar-rich natives such as New Jersey tea, prairie blazing star and butterfly weed. Add a shallow saucer or old birdbath filled with sand, gravel and water for a butterfly “watering hole.” Berms in general are good design elements for an urban or suburban yard. These independent beds can be created in a day or a weekend by adding a low mound of topsoil. It’s best if there is no vegetation growing in the area where the berm will be placed. This gives you an immediate clean slate, and the slight elevation really sets off plants.

Frog Pond

If you want a perennial water feature, you might install a small frog pond edged with dazzling cardinal flower, blue lobelia, pickerel plant and wild canna. A fringe of tussock sedge and southern blue flag completes the design. These natives also flourish in boggy, damp areas — or ones with heavy, wet and clay soils — where many other species cannot survive. Your frog pond can be made with a pre-formed or sheet liner, but one with a simple clay bottom will allow amphibians to over-winter.