http://spidra.vox.com/library/posts/tags/%22wildlife+garden%22/page/1/ Fruit Geekery and Arm Gimpery en Vox Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:45:58 -0700 Copyright 2008 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss "wildlife garden" http://spidra.vox.com/library/post/the-joys-of-wildlife-gardening.html?_c=feed-rss-full nobody@vox.com(spidra) http://spidra.vox.com/library/post/the-joys-of-wildlife-gardening.html?_c=feed-rss-full http://spidra.vox.com/library/post/the-joys-of-wildlife-gardening.html?_c=feed-rss-full Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:45:58 -0700 <p>I&#39;m a suburban girl.&#160; I grew up in a sedate suburb of Los Angeles.&#160; I encountered some creepy crawlies in our first home because it was a new development being carved out of what was a previously undeveloped cluster of hills.&#160; So we had to watch out for rattlesnakes, I saw a tarantula once, and there were lizards and other things around.&#160; When we moved from there to the long-since-developed flatlands, I hardly saw any animals that weren&#39;t pets or pests. I&#39;m not sure why (perhaps it&#39;s that I find animals inscrutable and thus unpredictable) but I&#39;m scared of most animals.&#160; I had bad experiences with dogs because of a number of irresponsible dog owners that would let their large aggressive dogs roam around the neighborhood free to chase and nip at little kids coming home from school.&#160; I&#39;ve tried to overcome my fears and have had some limited success.&#160; Though I&#39;m not a stereotypical nature girl, I&#39;m environmentalist in my politics.&#160; So in gardening it&#39;s important to me to provide habitat. </p><p> As for my own habitat, I like edibles.&#160; So my very first focus is on planting fruits, vegetables and herbs.&#160; But where appropriate and possible, I plant native plants.&#160; And some non-natives that act as good companion plants.&#160; When I moved into my present house, the large backyard consisted of 3/4 lawn.&#160; The remaining 1/4 consisted of 4 large raised beds (which were picked clean of vegetation), hybrid tea roses, a couple fruit trees that had not been cared for and two pecan trees. I knew I wanted to significantly change this yard. Although I wasn&#39;t truly aware of it at the time, this yard was largely devoid of life. The animals I remember seeing then were Argentine ants (exotic, have no natural predators), aphids, scale, thrips, slugs, snails, what I call &quot;McDonalds birds&quot; because they&#39;re so successful in urban environments (the house sparrow), raccoons and possums.&#160; These are all animals that have done quite well in urban and suburban environments in California. </p><p> I spent a lot of time researching the fruits I wanted to grow as well as herbs with medicinal and potherb value.&#160; I also worked with a couple fledgling landscape designers to incorporate native plants.&#160; We reduced the lawn size by half and replaced the lawn with Pacific Sod&#39;s No-Mow mix, which I&#39;d seen and fallen in love with at Mountain View Cemetery.&#160; The diseased and ill-formed plum and lemon tree were cut down.&#160; The pecan trees which couldn&#39;t bear fruit in such a cool environment were cut down, allowing sun to finally reach the raised beds they&#39;d shaded and also reducing any possible allelopath effect they could have on surrounding vegetation.&#160; In went apple, pear, plums, apricots, peaches, citrus, mulberries, feijoa and loquats.&#160; Out came the roses and in went strawberries, native flowering currants, wintergreen, native &quot;wild ginger&quot;, fruiting currants, blueberries, brambleberries, native buckwheat, native Erigeron, sweet violets, etc. etc.&#160; And, mostly importantly, because I&#39;m disabled and unable to hire help often, the yard often gets out of hand.&#160; It&#39;s not a tidy garden.&#160; So despite initial heavy mulching, there are weeds.&#160; And welcome volunteers such as love-in-a-mist. </p><p> The front yard changed from a couple hybrid tea roses, loads of juniper hedges, a large jade plant and a passionflower to native flowering currents, native and non-native grasses, salvias, cornflowers, honeywort, alyssum, California poppies, ageratum, larkspur, love-in-a-mist, native galias, chrysanthemums, native bushmallow, Lavatera bicolor...and a couple roses because I ended up getting over my disdain for them. </p><p> I think the first sign of life was sighting a soldier beetle.&#160; Then after about a year of being here, I FINALLY saw a ladybug.&#160; A welcome sight! Then hummingbirds started visiting the salvias and perching on my mulberry tree.&#160; I&#39;d never seen a hummingbird sit still before.&#160; It was wondrous.&#160; Such a tiny jewel of a bird. Fiery skippers became regular visitors to the Erigeron glaucus.&#160; Honeybees regularly worked the borage, joined by yellowfaced bumblebees. For reasons I haven&#39;t yet divined, wasps like hanging around the dilapidated park bench I got off Freecycle. They occasionally light on other plants, as I found out when I leaned against one of my potato plants and got a painful sting in the upper arm! </p><p> Now, after about 3.5 years of living here, I&#39;m seeing more new visitors.&#160; While clearing overgrown weeds and brush last fall, I spotted what I thought was a snake (yikes!) but turned out to be a California Slender Salamander. I was surprised and happy.&#160; Though I&#39;d like a pond, I don&#39;t have one.&#160; I don&#39;t even have a bird bath.&#160; Yet I saw something I associate with watery environments.&#160; I started seeing new birds that I still haven&#39;t been able to identify.&#160; I spotted a cute stubby grassshopper.&#160; A Northern Checkerspot butterfly. This week kicked it into overdrive with a sighting of two breathtaking visitors on the same day.&#160; One was a butterly I&#39;ve not yet ID&#39;d.&#160; It was the size of a fiery skipper and keeps its wings open like that, looking like a triangle as it perched.&#160; It was a delicate pale yellow with a pale iridescent blue body.&#160; I gaped it it with my mouth so wide open it threatened to drool.&#160; Over the drift of volunteer borage in my raised bed, I saw a jewel red dragonfly.&#160; Red body, red eyes, red wings.&#160; I&#39;d never seen such a thing in my life.&#160; It was a sight to inspire Lalique.&#160; And again I marveled at seeing such a thing when I&#39;m not particularly close to any of our ailing creeks and a mile away from the San Francisco Bay.</p><p>I find myself thinking of investing in guides to local birds and butterflies just so I can keep track of what I&#39;m seeing.&#160; Great herpetophobe that I am, I found myself looking into introducing snakes such as garter snakes into my yard.&#160; I&#39;ve longed to find room for a pond and work with an acquaintance who&#39;s an amphibian expert to see about introducing native frogs. I want to get someone able-bodied to help me build a barn owl box for a little natural rodent control.&#160; Yes, I still leap and scream when I see a snake in the wild. Yes, I&#39;m still afraid the big fearless raccoons that rule the roost in our nocturnal environment.&#160; But I&#39;m happy to see the wildlife and to encourage the return of diversity to our urban/suburban landscape.</p><p>The key is getting rid of that lawn monoculture and planting a variety of plants from groundcovers up to tall trees. And even more important is not to be too tidy.&#160; I think the animal kingdom loves the fact that gimpy ol&#39; me cannot possibly keep this place as weed-free and manicured as I aspire to.<br /> </p> <p style="clear:both;"> <a href="http://spidra.vox.com/library/post/the-joys-of-wildlife-gardening.html?_c=feed-rss-full#comments">Read and post comments</a> | <a href="http://www.vox.com/share/6a00c2252371ea604a00f48cef943e0002?_c=feed-rss-full">Send to a friend</a> </p> wildlife garden gardening biodiversity "wildlife garden" "native plants"