Providing cover
Here's a "bird's eye" view of cover. See the chickadee? This is a very different view of this climbing hydrangea than we usually see from the outside. We see a mass of leaves, but from the chickadee's point of view, this must seem like a nice safe place to be.
Cover is important for protection from weather, but also for protection from predators. Too often our overly manicured and neatly clipped bushes don't provide much cover.
Although I created my habitat garden just a few years ago, I have always liked a lot of natural-looking biomass. As a result, I had quite a bit of cover already, although I did remove some of the less valuable or invasive plants, such as the forsythia and burning bush, and replaced them with native dogwoods. These were popular spots with birds, but there were other bushes that had a lot more value than these, with less danger of them spreading to natural areas.
I've read that you should aim to have about 10% of your property planted in evergreens for the valuable cover they provide. I have arborvitae, two Eastern red cedar junipers, and three Canadian hemlocks I planted. The junipers need full sun and the hemlocks do well in the shade, so I have cover in a variety of locations.
Some of the other plants in my yard that provide cover are: Northern bayberry, pagoda dogwood, winterberry holly, juniper, various types of viburnum, as well as a sugar maple tree. Even some of my large native grasses can provide cover for smaller creatures.
And don't forget that there is a special need for cover in the cold Central New York winter. I enjoy seeing chickadees and other birds sitting in the evergreens on a cold winter day.
A place to perch
Many creatures also need a place to perch. It sounds trivial, but if you're a bird that needs to sing its song to declare your territory, you need a place to sit and sing it! So many yards have neatened up all the dead branches so there are no good spots to perch.
Here's some of the cover I've started in the back corner of our yard. It's also providing food. The biggest bush shown here is an elderberry, but there's a variety of other things here including Cupplant and a Eastern Cedar next to this section.
This shows some of the cover in the front yard. The bushes at the bottom are all but one of my male bayberries, still young. Unfortunately, I happened to purchase mostly males when I first bought bayberries until I realized that fall was the best time to buy them so you could see the berries and know which ones were female. I moved these out to the front so they will at least provide cover when they're grown even though they won't produce berries. There's also a redbud tree, a weeping crabapple, and an evergreen near the house.
Toad Abode - This is supposed to provide cover for toads. I don't know if any of our toads have ever used it, but I like to have it anyway. In our yard, there are lots of places for a toad to be without looking for a toad abode, but if a yard is mainly grass, this might be useful. In fact, this toad abode might be used more if I semi-buried it so the opening was a little smaller. Something to experiment with...
Rock wall - Some creatures can live in a stone wall. This isn't as an elaborate stone wall as it should be for maximum cover, but all I had avalable were the small stones left over from building the pond. To the left is the beginnings of the wet meadow.
