How to Get Wild in Your Garden

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"Lawns are pretty useless," Winter says. "Geese and rabbits might like them, but even they would be better served by other plants. Besides, they demand too much water and fertilizer. It's a waste."

That was easy. What's next?

Food sources. I admit that I'm guilty of going for the more glamorous options. My showy fuchsias produce nectar; aster and sedum offer a buffet of pollen in late summer; and glorious purple coneflower gives way to dramatic seed heads in the fall. But a conversation with Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens (Timber Press, 2007), reminds me that leafy greens are also good for insects and birds.

"Herbivorous insects take the energy that plants grab from the sun and move it through the food web," Tallamy says. "Look, 96 percent of birds in this county rear their young on insects. People think of feeding birds berries and seeds, but they really need insects while they're rearing their young. And the insects that are native to this country have to eat native plants. They can't always digest exotic leaves."

Fair enough. But the ideal food source for herbivorous insects is tree leaves, and a big bushy tree is something I can't accommodate in my small garden. I looked through the list of plant species that Tallamy recommends in his book and settled on a variety of Ceanothus, or California lilac, a woody shrub that's native to my area. I've easily met the minimum requirement of three food sources, and if I hadn't, I could have thrown in some supplemental feeders to make up for it.

It's not enough to give wild creatures a bite to eat; they need a place to crash too. I don't have space for a cave or a rock pile or a thicket of dense shrubbery, but I've got a nesting box for bees, a rotten log or two where bugs can hide, and plenty of ground cover to give small creatures a hangout. I need only two kinds of shelter to meet the requirement, but I want to do something more. I decide to call Ellin Beltz, author of Frogs: Inside Their Remarkable World (Firefly, 2005). "Frog habitats are incredibly easy," she says. "Find a damp place in your garden. Turn over a broken flowerpot so there's just a little opening near the ground. That's it. If you're lucky, frogs will find you."

Okay, that I can do. Beltz also helps me with the trickiest part of the certification, the one that threatened to trip me up: a water source. Birds and other wildlife need clean water to drink and bathe in. But here's the problem: I live just a few blocks from the ocean, and it rains almost nonstop in the winter. In this soggy environment, I don't want to surround myself with more water, so installing a pond is out of the question. Even a fountain seemed like too much effort and expense. I was also worried about inadvertently turning my yard into a breeding ground for mosquitoes and West Nile virus.

"Don't make it so complicated," Beltz says. "I keep a half-barrel filled with water as a frog habitat, and I hang a wind chime above it so that the tail drags in the water. That's just enough movement to discourage mosquito eggs. Besides, the frogs would gobble them up anyway."

For those in search of an easier fix, Beltz offers an even simpler solution designed specifically for amphibians: hang a water bottle above the frog house, then punch a tiny hole in the bottom so there's a steady drip. That's just enough to give frogs the cool, damp hideout they're after. (continued)

What's left? A place to raise young. Once again, I'm fresh out of caves, wetlands, thickets, and ponds. But I do have host plants for caterpillars--a native milkweed that monarchs feed on--and a nesting box. I'm not sure you could call my front yard of tall grasses and asters a true meadow, but it's close enough.

That brings me to one critical element of creating a backyard wildlife habitat that certification doesn't cover: design.

I'm lucky to live in a laid-back neighborhood that doesn't demand perfectly manicured lawns, but that's not always the case. "Let your neighbors know what you're doing before you get started," Beltz suggests. Many cities and towns have ordinances that essentially mandate a manicured lawn in order to reduce overgrown shrubbery, which presents a brushfire hazard. But even in particularly restrictive environments there are ways to work around the rules.

"There's no reason why the public part of your garden can't be designed well and integrate with the neighborhood," she adds. "This is not an excuse not to mow your lawn."

I've long admired the naturalistic style that I first saw in Nancy Ondra's book Grasses: Versatile Partners for Uncommon Garden Design (Storey, 2002), so I pick up the phone and call her for some design advice. She tells me she certified her garden about a year and a half ago.

"Let me give you the one and only design rule you will need: plant in groups," Ondra says. "Don't put an aster here and there. Plant them together in a drift.Grouping plants in large clumps looks more appealing than a more random, haphazard approach. And if you live in a neighborhood where appearances are a big deal, use hardscape: fences, brick paths, stone planters. Put some hard edges around the wilderness and it will look more like 'I meant to do this.' "

The National Wildlife Federation sells a small yard sign to certified gardeners for $25; Ondra says that putting the sign in her front yard answered most of her neighbors' questions. "People even pull into the driveway to read it," she says. "They're learning something."

In the end, I didn't change much. I planted a couple of shrubs, installed a frog house, and added a water source before I nervously sent in my application. I had always been a little intimidated by the National Wildlife Federation program: I was certain my little garden wouldn't measure up. Much to my delight, it does.

The certificate is nice, but the real seal of approval comes on warm nights when the delirious chorus of crickets drifts into my office from the yard, drowning out the clatter of my keyboard and luring me outside.

One night I walked down the street to see how far their song extended. I didn't even make it to the end of the block before I realized that every other yard was silent. My garden had become a cricket amphitheater for the entire neighborhood. The crickets sang as if they didn't want to be forgotten, as if they intended to remind us that we are never far from wildlife, even at home.