Views of my wildlife habitat
Front yard
This is our front entrance amid a no-maintenance front yard. This isn't a habitat area as much as an example of what people can do instead of having a lawn - at the moment hosta and ajuga since that's what I had available for free. However, the sugar maple, redbud, and bayberry bushes in the front yard (not seen here) do have habitat value. While this may not look as conventional as a regular lawn, it does cover a lot of area without having to fertilize, use pesticides, mow, or rake - plus there's a bonus of flowers in the spring.
Here's the left side of the front yard the first year we created it - 2002.
The little bushes along the sidewalk are compact
inkberries that I had just planted. In back of the Kentucky Coffee
tree are two spicebushes - a great native plant, but difficult to
find. The red flowers on the left are Lady in Red salvia,
a favorite of the hummingbirds. This is about the only patch of lawn we
have left. Why did we leave this? Originally, this is where we ran out
of energy. An additional reason is that we use this area when we're
grinding leaves. It's also a good demonstration that you don't need to
use all those chemicals to have a "good enough" lawn.
Side yard
We have a corner lot, so this garden is along the street. Since it is more public than our backyard garden, it is evolving into a garden that focuses more on attractive flowers that also have habitat value. This is about all the lawn we have left, just serving as a border to the "real" yard - the other plantings. (Here's what the sign in the foreground says.)
This is a detail of the view in the photo above. There are liatris, coneflowers, asters, marigolds, cosmos, monarda, and many other kinds of flowers.
There's room in the habitat garden for some old favorites, too! I've always loved the jewel-like colors of portulaca. It's also a favorite of passers-by since this is adjacent to the road at the end of the driveway.
This shows our plantings along the front side as well as our path. It's hard to believe but all this was lawn the previous year! The white car in the driveway is our Prius, the Toyota hybrid car.
Here's the side of the front yard in August 2004.
This is the garden outside our backyard fence - Summer 03. Instead of a lawn border, in this section, I'm trying an alyssum border that reseeds itself. Although it does seem to provide nectar since there are often little insects hovering around these, the main reason I planted these is to have fragrance greeting people as they walk past. One problem with this is that the weeds grow along with the alyssum, making it more time-consuming than I expected. This is a problem I don't have with perennials since they grow faster than annual weeds, which don't have a chance to get started.
Shrub border - July 04. I didn't plant the alyssum this year. Instead, I transplanted the nepeta which will fill in along the road, doesn't seem to mind salt, and will crowd out the weeds. Although this isn't native, it doesn't seem to be invasive (although it does reseed), and it's a good nectar plant. I'll monitor this to see if it becomes a problem. I might ultimately find a native plant that meets the requirements for this site.
Back yard
This is the beginnings of my meadow-wannabe. You can see joe-pye weed, daylilies, different kinds of asclepias (milkweed), liatris, coreopsis, monarda, salvia and more.
This is next to our pond. It has lots of native plants for food and cover: arborvitae, milkweed, Joe-pye weed, New England asters, deschampsia grass, clethra, goldenrod, and great blue lobelia. The red flowers are Lady in Red salvia, not native to Central NY, but it's native to Texas (i.e. not a hybrid and at least native to the continent), and it seems to be an especially popular source of nectar for hummingbirds and butterflies. I also have logs and leaf litter in this area, which is a good place to find insects! The little solar light is intended to be a Toad Light, a low light that is supposed to attract insects for toads at night; I'm not sure it's bright enough to do the trick, but it does no harm.
