**ARCHIVED POST **
After severe drought killed much of our traditional landscaping, my family decided to adopt new landscaping that would support local wildlife. This kind of gardening is sometimes called “wildscaping,” which is simply landscaping with the primary purpose of supporting wildlife. The thing is, I didn’t know anything about wildscaping or even about gardening! But I found mentors in various local groups, like the Houston Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas; I read voraciously; and I experimented in the gardens, learning as much from my mistakes as from my successes. Now, six years later, our home gardens have welcomed 50 species of butterfly and around 30 species each of bee and wasp, among many other insects. And because insects provide many important eco-services, our local eco-system also benefits from their abundance in our gardens.
I wanted to share ten helpful things I’ve learned on my wildscaping journey, for those looking to start their own home wildscape:
- Use native plants. The most important rule of thumb is to incorporate plants that are native to your eco-region as much as possible. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is that insects often cannot consume plants with which they have not co-evolved because they cannot digest the chemicals in the leaf or pollen. Moreover, if an aggressive native plant gets out of your garden, it doesn’t matter because it has been part of the local eco-system for millennia. In contrast, if a non-native, invasive species that nothing here eats gets out, it will have an advantage over our native plants, crowding them out and leaving less food for our native insects. Always lean toward using native plants and if you incorporate non-native plants, first ensure that they are not invasive.
Don’t use pesticides. Pesticides are equal-opportunity killers. They might kill those insects eating your plants, but they will also kill many other insects, including those that would keep pests in check naturally. In a healthy garden, predators and parasitoids, many of which are insects themselves, will take care of the pests in our gardens.- Plant in clusters of species. The more you plant clusters of individual plant species, the more intentional your garden will look. A good rule of thumb is that you want to plant clusters of odd numbers of a single plant: three, five, seven. You can have multiple clusters of the same species in different parts of the garden. Not only does clustering serve an aesthetic purpose, giving the eye a place to rest and looking intentional, but it also serves a biological function. For example, some insects (especially bees) practice “flower constancy,” where they like to feed on the nectar and pollen of a single plant species before moving on to another. If you give them a big cluster of a single plant species, you make their life easier. The same goes for pollen and leaf specialist insects, who can digest the leaf or pollen of only those plants in a particular family, genus, or species. By clustering some of your plants in the garden, you might be helping them find the food sources they need more easily.
- Plant a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Variety is the spice of life, including for insects! This takes several forms. First, you want to ensure that you have something blooming in the garden during all seasons, so that critters can feed throughout the year. When you select plants, consider their bloom time. Second, you want flowers of different colors. Insects do not see colors the same way as each other or as humans do. For example, bees have a hard time distinguishing red from green, but they can see yellow, white, and purple particularly well. Likewise, hummingbirds and butterflies are particularly drawn to reds. Having an assortment of colors in your garden supports more insects. Third, you want a variety of flower shapes and sizes. Insects have a wide range of mouthpart shapes and sizes, and their bodies are bigger or smaller, relative to each other. The more shapes and sizes of flowers you have, the wider variety of insects you will invite.
- Plant for the babies. When we think of pollinators, we often think of the adults and what they need to survive, for example, adult butterflies and the nectar sources they need. But insects may eat very different things in their larval stages. Make sure to incorporate plants that feed the larvae, not just the adults. To support a robust butterfly population, you need not just nectar plants, but also plants with leaves the caterpillars can eat (host plants).
- Aim for density. You want to think about how the plant will eventually fill the space. Density without overcrowding is a good thing, just as plants grow in the wild. Dense plantings suppress the growth of weeds underneath and this means less time spent weeding.
- Put plants with similar needs together. Make sure that you plant things that have similar needs in the same area. In thinking about the needs of plants, consider sun, water, and soil. You don’t want to put a plant that wants lots of water beside a plant that doesn’t.
Think about plant height. You also want to think about how tall any plant you install might ultimately become. Put those tall “structural” plants in strategic areas, with medium and low plants around them, to make your garden look intentional. “Layering” plants like this will also help support wildlife, which may use different plant layers for shelter, nesting, etc.- Use borders. To make your garden look more intentional, border your garden beds distinctly. Doing this shows deliberate design, which can help the community accept your wildscape.
- Embrace imperfection. Doing less in a wildscape can actually benefit wildlife. For example, do not cut back stems over winter. Some native bee and wasp species nest in pithy or hollow stems, so that if we cut and compost dead stems, we might be throwing out their larvae. Leave the leaves that fall on the ground, or collect them and use them in place of mulch, because some wildlife will overwinter under them, and insects’ pupae might still be attached to them. For the same reasons, don’t shred these leaves, wherever they are placed. And also avoid mowing over early spring wildflowers because these may be the only food source available to insects coming out of diapause (like hibernation).
**ARCHIVED POST**
**ARCHIVED POST LINKS & PICTURES MAY NOT WORK**
**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: laurensimpson
