Landscaping for Wildlife

Natural landscapes are diminishing, which is why we should do what we can to support ecosystems and wildlife. In this section, you’ll find information on landscaping for wildlife, including the importance of home gardening with native plants, attracting beneficial insects, gardening for birds, natural landscaping, and preventing deer damage. Find tips on poisonous plants, rain gardens, and bird feeder lessons.

How to Attract Wildlife to Your Home Garden

If you attract birds, mammals, and insects to visit and live in your garden, you’re helping to look after local wildlife and keep valuable green spaces thriving. You’re also encouraging natural predators, which can help control garden pests. There are many different ways you can attract wildlife into your garden.

You can encourage various beneficial insects if you create a diverse landscape and include various flowering plants and native and non-native trees and shrubs. Not only that, but you’d also be encouraging diverse pollinators.

One fundamental way to help pollinators is to grow plants that provide pollen and nectar. Eastern redbud flowers offer some of the earliest spring nectar for native bees and honey bees. Some of the best plants for pollinators include boneset, clustered mountain mint, coastal plain Joe Pye, stiff goldenrod, and swamp milkweed.

To attract butterflies, you also need to include larval host plants for caterpillars to eat. You can support butterflies, bees, moths, and other beneficial insects by delaying your garden cleanup until spring.

You can attract birds to your garden by incorporating plants that they like, using feeders in your garden, creating a proper habitat and shelter, and providing a water source for drinking and bathing. Layers, such as ground cover, low plants, shrubs, and trees, are also suitable for attracting birds. Supplement local food supplies for hummingbirds by planting flowering herbs, shrubs, vines, and trees, particularly those that flower from May to September.

Natural Landscaping and Wildlife Habitats

Traditionally, gardens in the US predominantly include lawns. And while a lawn has a key role to play in the residential landscape, many lawn alternatives are more wildlife-friendly.

The tide, however, is changing, and more and more home gardeners are adopting gardening and landscaping practices that harmonize with nature. Home gardens have a vital role to play as a lifeline for plants, birds, beneficial insects, and other animals that have lost their native habitat to development.

The perfect habitat for wildlife should provide for their basic needs. For landscaping, select woody plants such as trees, shrubs, and vines. Hedgerows provide a haven for wildlife, and a bonus is that they can beautifully screen your property.

Ideally, you should plant a variety of native plants that grow in all seasons. Christmas fern is a popular native evergreen. Perennial native plants include columbine, wild ginger, butterfly weed, and wild geranium. Native plants are an excellent choice because they help to preserve Pennsylvania’s biodiversity.

Certain wildlife species, such as deer, can cause unwelcome damage. Deer are very adaptive and selective feeders and can be discouraged by planting trees, shrubs, ground covers, and climbers that are rarely damaged by deer.