Backyard Biodiversity

The eastern bluebird is most at home at the edge of an open meadow

In recent years, there has been a shift away from carefully manicured lawns and gardens and toward more natural-looking informal landscapes that make greater use of native plants that require little maintenance. Here are some ways to turn all or part of your property into a natural landscape—one that is beautiful requires less effort to maintain and provides a haven for many species of birds insects and animals.

A lawn can be a beautiful part of the home landscape, but it shouldn't be the only part. With thoughtful plant selection and placement, it's easy to design a low-maintenance yard that still gives the appearance of neatness and care. What's more by incorporating certain plants into the landscape you can improve critical habitat for songbirds butterflies and other wildlife.

Our fascination with lawns and lawn care comes at a steep cost. Over 25 million acres of America—an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania—is devoted to lawn grass. This green carpet has replaced the habitats of our native plants songbirds and other wildlife; the summer air is filled with pollution and noise from gasoline-powered mowers; and lawn-care tasks eat up millions of hours each year that could be spent more productively or enjoyably.

It wasn't always this way of course. Early settlers once maintained a small clearing around their houses with the help of an occasional "mowing" from sheep cattle or a scythe. Their home landscapes included gardens fruit trees shrubs and trees which were surrounded by pastures and cropland. When the first reel mower was introduced in 1830 manicured lawns quickly became the vogue at estates and parks. Yet the popularity of lawns didn't really explode until after World War II, when new suburban neighborhoods were developed with rolling carpets of turf.

The most obvious place to begin turning your lawn into a natural landscape is in those areas where grass doesn't thrive in the first place: shaded areas under trees, wet sections of the yard, steep banks and rocky outcroppings. These places are all perfect candidates for alternative plantings.

Next, do some research and develop a plan of what you'd like to see growing in these "problem" areas. Start small and replant step by step. Here are a few things to remember as you go about creating an attractive and low-maintenance yard:

• Go for a natural look rather than a formal one.
• Select a limited number of plant varieties and bunch them together in drifts.
• Plant groundcovers.
• Select plants appropriate to your climate.
• Incorporate paved surfaces and fences.

The natural look: A formal yard has lots of open space with plants strategically placed on the edges of the lawn. The natural landscape, however, incorporates more native plants—trees, shrubs, ornamental grasses and flowering perennials—that are grouped together in free-flowing swaths around the property.

You can incorporate these plants into your current landscape, create special areas (like a cactus garden or a bird or butterfly sanctuary) or simply allow sections of your yard to go wild. Many nurseries and garden centers now carry a good selection of hardy native plants.

Whatever you do, please do not remove plants from the wild to transplant into your garden. Many wild plant species are rare or endangered and could be irretrievably lost if they do not survive the move to your yard.

Planting in drifts: Traditional gardens tend to incorporate a large number of different plant varieties, but keeping all those competing plants in their place can be hard work. To avoid this predicament, limit the number of plant varieties and group the plants together, giving them enough elbow room so that they will grow for many years without crowding each other out. You'll find that, in time, the shrubs and perennials will merge into one large planting that helps suppress weeds and creates a safe haven for birds, toads and other small creatures.

Ground covers: These plants form a ground-hugging companion for taller plants and protect the soil from erosion as they spread. Plus, when they're mature, they keep weeds and other unwanted plants from gaining a foothold. Although it takes a little patience and effort to establish ground covers, their year-round color and interest makes it well worth the wait.

For shaded areas, try planting periwinkle (Vinca minor) under your trees or incorporate ferns, lily-of-the-valley and pachysandra in shady corners of the yard. For spring color, plant spring-blooming bulbs, Solomon's-seal and old-fashioned bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) between the ground cover plants.

For sunny, dry areas, daylilies are one of the easiest fastest-spreading perennial ground covers you can grow. Creeping thyme (Thymus praecox spp. arcticus, also sold as T. serpyllum) as well as juniper, euonymus and creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera) also make a nice carpet in sunny spots.

While trees shrubs and perennials may be the predominant elements in a natural landscape, they are only part of a much larger ecosystem. From bees, birds and butterflies to larger animals, such as squirrels and chipmunks, the natural landscape—even on a modest backyard scale—can play host to a fascinating diversity of creatures. Encouraging wildlife to come into your garden requires a slight shift in how we perceive our home landscapes.

Features like brush piles, compost heaps, hedgerows and stone walls may seem like utilitarian areas of the yard but they can provide shelter for a range of small animals that need a place to call home. Once you start looking at your yard from a wild perspective (a bird's-eye view, one might say), you will undoubtedly discover other features that, while they might be relatively unimportant to you, provide wonderful habitat for wildlife.

A standing trunk of a dead tree, for instance, might represent home (or the diner) for a surprisingly large range of birds, insects and mammals. Rather than removing it you might want to leave it right where it is, lopping off any dangerous or unsightly limbs and letting nature take its course with the rest. A dead tree trunk surrounded by daylilies or lilies-of-the-valley can even become a beautiful landscape feature, evoking visions of ancient ruins or natural decay.

Now look over your landscape through this new, wild perspective and imagine what you would need to survive there. You'd need food, of course, and a source of water. You'd also need a place to take shelter from weather and hungry predators. To create a truly diverse landscape, you will have to provide for these needs. There are a few ways to do this.

• Identify the "host plants" that are food sources for the particular creatures you want to attract. For example the monarch butterfly has a special relationship with the milkweed plant and hummingbirds love fuchsia.
• Provide artificial shelters or food sources. Erecting houses designed to attract bluebirds or purple martins or simply put out seed and suet in feeders. Set up hummingbird feeders to provide nectar. Buy or build shelters for bats, butterflies, toads and other creatures. Once you know which kinds of houses certain animals prefer, you can even make them out of recycled materials. For instance a broken terra-cotta turned upside down is a perfect home for toads.
• Provide water. A pond will, of course, attract a diversity of wildlife, from dragonflies to migrating waterfowl. But a small pool or fountain can liven up a natural landscape. Even a half whiskey barrel sunk into the ground can provide the perfect home for minnows water striders and a family of frogs.

Plants and habitat requirements obviously vary for different birds insects and animals and separate regions of the country have different native species. So, decide what kinds of native species you'd like to attract to your garden then consult field guides.