National Wildlife Foundation offers the below five steps to Create Wildlife-Friendly Gardens. This post links to their website: http://www.nwf.org to certify your new wildlife habitat. Whether an apartment balcony or a 20-acre farm, a garden that attracts beautiful wildlife helps restore habitat in commercial and residential areas.
Provide Food Planting native forbs, shrubs and trees provides the foliage, nectar, pollen, berries, seeds and nuts that many species of wildlife require to survive and thrive. Incorporating supplemental feeders and food sources also helps.
Supply Water Wildlife need clean water sources for many purposes, including drinking, bathing and reproduction. These may include natural features such as ponds, streams and wetlands; or human-made features such as bird baths, puddling areas for butterflies, installed ponds or rain gardens.
Create Cover Wildlife require places to hide in order to feel safe from people, predators and inclement weather. Using things in a garden setting like native vegetation, shrubs, thickets and brush piles or even dead trees provides necessary cover.
Give Wildlife a Place for Young Wildlife need a sheltered place to raise their offspring. Many places for cover can double as locations where wildlife can raise young, from wildflower meadows and bushes where many butterflies and moths lay their eggs, or caves where bats roost and form colonies.
Let Your Garden Go Green Garden or landscape maintenance can have an important effect on the health of soil, air, water and habitat for native wildlife–as well as the human community nearby. Composting, mulching as well as reducing both turf grass and chemical use are key steps to gardening greener.
Ready…Set…Certify! <<-Click this link once these five essential elements are provided. Join others across the country as part of NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat™ program.
Guardians Around The Earth 