Habitat Corridor Project

Sometimes we want to do something beneficial, like turning our backyard into a wildlife habitat, but it feels too big a task or we just don’t know where to start. The good news: you really don’t have to start over; there are so many ways to make a garden more wildlife-friendly. So where to start?  Is there space to add one or more native trees or shrubs?  Ceanothus, coffeeberry, hollyleaf cherry, toyon, for example, like sunny spots and are drought tolerant.  Do you need a hedge for screening? These plants double as hedgerow options, too, while providing nectar or berries, or both.  Can you find room in planting beds for a drift of native perennials or small shrubs?  Early spring-blooming native salvias are a great source of nectar for native bees, honeybees and butterflies. Summer-blooming coyotemint (Mondardella spp.), a favorite of butterflies, looks beautiful massed or spilling over a wall. Taking a big-picture view of your back and front gardens, look for ways to increase diversity.  Planning for more vertical layers of trees, shrubs, and ground plants will add shelter and nesting places. Plants that produce seeds and berries, fruits and nuts add more foraging sites.  A water source for birds can be as simple as a birdbath filled with fresh water.  Summer is a good time to see who is showing up in your garden.   

NATIVE PLANT SALE

If you are looking to enhance the habitat value of your garden, you won’t want to miss the annual CNPS (California Native Plant Society) plant sale on October 8, 10am-1pm, at the Laguna Foundation, 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa. There will be all the usual suspects— manzanitas, ceanothus, coyote bush, salvias, monkeyflowers —plus many more great habitat plants. Here are a few on offer that may be less familiar.  Do you have quail on your property or nearby?  Quail bush or saltbush (Atriplex) is a fast growing, dense, silvery gray shrub that grows 5 feet or more, and quail love to use it for cover.  It’s tough and drought tolerant and tolerates wind and saline soil conditions.  Spicebush (Calycanthus), a large bird-habitat shrub I enjoyed immensely at a former garden, is ideal for planting near ponds, along streams or other moist areas. Growing 5-12 feet tall with beautiful green foliage and exotic dark maroon flowers in spring, which are beetle-pollinated, spicebush does best with part shade. Our native red-twigged dogwood (Cornus sericea) is another large shrub that needs some summer water or a moist location. With beautiful red stems that look dramatic in the winter and white flower clusters in the spring, this dogwood provides food and cover for birds and also serves as a host plant for the Spring Azure butterfly.  A plant I always look for in late spring on certain trails near the coast is bee plant (Scrophularia).  I once planted a drift of this local perennial under a black oak and watched the hummers nectar on the long stemmed tiny red flowers—bee plant is a delightful addition to a habitat garden.  Hummers also love the gooseberries and there will be several ribes species available: pink-flowering currant and golden currant.  And don’t forget milkweed for the Monarchs!   Enjoy!

MORE ON MONARCHS

On July 21 the monarch butterfly was declared endangered by IUCN (The International Union for the Conservation of Nature). Being listed on the IUCN Red List means it is the first time the monarch has been officially considered in danger of extinction.  Evidently, there is a big difference in which population —the eastern or the western— is more at risk.  Our western population has declined 99.9 percent in the last few decades, from around 10 million in the 1980s to under 2,000 in 2121.  The eastern population declined by 84 percent between 1996 and 2014.  There was a recent controversial study based on citizen-science data from summer nesting sites that showed an increase in some US locations.  However, according to the latest research, it is the winter data that tells the real story.  Even if populations rebound in some places in the summer, overwintering populations, whether declining or even remaining stable, are just way too low.  

So what to do?  As always, plant as much milkweed as possible, because chemically sprayed  farmland milkweed, loss of habitat, and overdevelopment of traditional nesting grounds are some of the reasons our gardens seem to be the last ditch resource for our western monarchs.   We advocate planting native milkweeds, but if you do plant tropical milkweed, be sure to cut it back in the fall/winter.  Tropical milkweed stays green and discourages monarchs from migrating. Cutting it back also helps to eliminate spores that could be on the plant. Climate change has made it easier for tropical milkweed to overwinter in our area.  So I repeat, be sure to cut it back.  Look for native milkweed plants at our CNPS plant sale this fall.  We’ll keep you updated on which species will be available.  

Locals and Migrants: Autumn in the Habitat Garden

The white-crowned sparrows have come and gone. Their melancholy song marked the end of summer and the return of the autumn season.  Golden-crowned sparrows, a female tanager and a male yellow rumped warbler turned up at the garden pond a few weeks ago. Cedar waxwings have shown up to bathe communally at the waterfall basin.  It’s the season for these migratory birds and many others as they make a stopover to hunt for food, to stay awhile or continue on. They join our local residents in the hunt for fall’s bounty of seeds, nuts, and berries.  

Native trees and shrubs not only provide these food sources, they also support a high number of insect species that birds feed on, which makes them essential to bird habitat. Coyote bush, for example, attracts hundreds of insect species. Many native shrubs provide berries—coffeeberry, toyon, blue elderberry, hollyleaf cherry (and other Prunus spp.), for example— for Northern mockingbirds, cedar waxwings and robins, omnivores that eat insects plus seeds, berries and nuts.  Meanwhile, seed-eaters like the resident finches, California towhees and juncos are searching in the leaf litter that we leave under shrubs and trees where it falls.  Leaves, flower petals and chopped up plant trimmings make excellent mulch that soaks up the rain and provides hiding places for insects, which also feed the leaf mulch foragers.  Light leaf mulch (or bare soil) offers nesting sites to ground-nesting native bees. Beetle larvae also overwinter in the soil.  Fall and winter are ideal seasons for planting natives; they will have the winter to grow deep roots for the long dry season.  They will enhance the bird habitat value of any landscape.

WHAT CAN WE DO

 in our own gardens to help sustain our local wildlife?   Because by all accounts, and many of our own observations, populations of many songbirds, butterflies and bees are going in the wrong direction, way too fast.   In “The California WIldlife Habitat Garden”, I write about ways to grow a habitat garden by starting first with a walk around your landscape. And this is a good time to take that walk and start thinking about what to change or plant in the fall. What are you providing right now?   Vertical  layers of cover?  A water source?  Food and nectar plants?   Are there fences or trellises available for shrubs or vines that produce nectar for hummingbirds or fruit for birds?  Are there plants that have little wildlife value that could be gradually replaced with native trees, shrubs or ground plants?  A plant screen of berry-producing trees or shrubs would serve wildlife and might also give more privacy from neighbors or cars.  Is there a place for a birdbath or wildlife pond?  For drifts of seasonal nectar flowers?  Which host plants for local butterflies could you add near the nectar flowers?   Don’t forget to look at traffic patterns in the garden; improving the habitat value of areas where activity is lightest is a good place to start.  When we decide to plant for wildlife, a new relationship with the land evolves.  Instead of outdoor decoration, the garden becomes a web of life, a sanctuary, and a daily invitation to enjoy whatever shows up—and every single habitat garden is unique with its own unexpected surprises.