Sharon Lovejoy

BIRDS, BEES, BATS & BUTTERFLIES:

A Welcome to my Garden

Sharon Lovejoy

"I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries,

and very frankly give them fruit for their songs."

Joseph Addison

In 1984, I moved into an old California cottage shrouded in ivy. Despicable, deadly, strangling ivy as boring and lifeless as a supermarket parking lot. My husband, sons and I set out to "liberate" the trees and bushes and old rock walls. When we had finished, we were faced with an unearthly landscape devoid of life and the sounds and signs of nature.

Deliberately and slowly I searched old class notes, field records, and Dover and Audubon books and laid out a crazy quilt plan for a natural garden. For months we planted dozens of native and introduced species of food plants. Debris was raked, run through a shredder, and spread thickly on the barren land. Hundreds of pots of seeds were sown and nurtured and transplanted. We scattered birdbaths throughout the gardens along with a half dozen bird feeders and nesting boxes. The final touch was the reworking of the old fountain and the welcoming trickle of clear, clean water.

Within the first year at our home, we logged in a formidable list of important visitors. Coveys of quail began sheltering in our brush piles and feasting in the huge feeder outside our bedroom window. Acorn woodpeckers, Steller's and scrub jays, chickadees, juncos, white-crowned sparrows, rufous-sided and brown towhees, a merlin, flickers and numerous other birds became dwellers on our land and bathers at our facilities. Huge, lazy gopher snakes sunned across pathways as toads ambled quietly past. Hummingbirds haunted the salvia beds and made their tiny, lichen lined nests in the bottle brush and fuchsia flowering gooseberry. I felt like we had created our own heaven-on-earth.

Our gardens reflected our simple acts of kindness and love, just as they would have reflected neglect or misuse. Every act of planting and nurturing fosters a reciprocal act of growth and abundance. Our tiny spot of earth demonstrates that every gardener counts. Every yard, patio, pond, pot of geraniums, box of worms, compost pile, and hedgerow of sheltering, edible habitat counts.

More than three-fourths of the two billion acres of land in the U.S. is privately owned. Think of the impact of millions of gardeners nurturing the land and providing a pesticide free, balanced environment a mini ecosystem, capable of furnishing water, food, shelter and habitat to the creatures passing through, flying by, or settling down to stay. The impact would be immeasurable and as closely akin to Eden as any of us could hope.

What You Can Do to Attract Wildlife to Your Garden

* Water is the most important feature you can provide. Birds and animals don't stop depending on water in winter; they need it 12 months a year. Keep water supply clean and fresh. Provide bird baths, saucers of water on the ground, a pond (even a tiny one), saucers of damp sand for butterflies, or moving water to attract hummingbirds, warblers and a variety of other birds.

* Food for critters doesn't just come in bird seed bags or bottles of nectar. You can plan and plant a habitat that provides constant and varied nourishment throughout the year. If you plant a habitat filled with a variety of nectar plants, fruits, and berries, you will enjoy the company of many small guests through the four seasons. Migrating birds feed on the insects that feed on oaks, maples and hickories. Plant a few of these fast food trees in your woodland garden and watch as waves of migrant birds fuel up.

* Your small visitors need shelter from predators and weather. Hedgerows, berry thickets, perennial borders, windbreaks, thick blankets of mulch, evergreen vines, evergreen trees, and mixed borders of shrubs and deciduous trees attract birds, beneficial insects, bats, and numerous small animals.

Bats roost and toads take shelter in dry rock walls. Make sure the rocks are at least 12" wide. Once you build a habitat wall, don't move it.

Allow a few dead trees to stand. You will be rewarded by the nesting of woodpeckers, sapsuckers, owls, creepers, chickadees, bluebirds and many others. Create a large brush pile of branches and twigs. Many species of birds and animals will take refuge in these piles.

* Habitat the native environment of an animal or plant; the kind of place that is natural for the life and growth of an animal or plant. Habitat diversity begets a rich and varied abundance of birds, bees, butterflies, bats, moths, and animals. How do you create a habitat in your garden?

Get to know your personal landscape and the needs of each chosen plant. Experiment with your local native species. Group plants according to their growing needs and mix the plant species and forms. In choosing plants take into consideration sizes, textures and time of fruit and seed production. Join the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Habitat Program.

"My garden invites into it all the birds

of the country by offering them

the conveniency of springs and shades,

solitude and shelter...

by this means I have always

the music of the Season

in its perfection."

Joseph Addison