You don’t have to live in a witch’s cottage to grow a garden hospitable to local wildlife. Whether big or small, your humble courtyard or patio can be teeming with life in a single season. Once you’ve created your backyard conservatory, you can have it certified by the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) and receive a very official-looking plaque to display in your garden for all your new squirrelly friends to see.
Making a garden more creature friendly is simple. Just provide everything the animals need to be comfortable, and they will stay. The NWF requires that you provide food, water, cover, a place to raise young, and sustainable gardening practices to be declared a Certified Wildlife Habitat.
Annas Hummingbird in flight, feeding on Butterfly Bush Flowers
Wildlife Checklist
- Food
Foliage, nectar, seeds, and berries are pretty easy to supply. Native wildflowers, herbaceous perennials, and your favorite berry vines and bushes will cover all the bases. You can also supplement with feeders if you like. - Water
This one is tricky because, though you want the birds to have their baths and the frogs to have their ponds, giving the mosquitoes their nest will probably make you want to toss the NWF and their fancy certification. Two possible approaches: create running water features, because mosquitoes are not as likely to breed in moving water, or make your habitat more hospitable to animals that eat mosquitoes (birds, bats, frogs, and lovely little spiders) than to the mosquitoes themselves. - Cover
Wild animals might want to eat your food and drink your water, but they don’t want to look at you. Give the animals a place to hide from people, predators, and bad weather. Low, leafy shrubs and perennials work well. Toads in particular are particularly easy to please. They will happily make themselves at home in an overturned flowerpot in a shady area. - A Place to Raise Their Young
This can be a simple shady little bush for butterflies or an spacious and elegant birdhouse. Learn about native birds and placement of birdhouses; sometimes height and size are very important to certain species. Bat caves, frog ponds, and creepy-crawly rock piles also fall into this category. - Sustainable Gardening Practices
We’ve all heard of growing green. Composting. Mulch. Don’t use too many chemicals. If you have created a proper habitat, it should be mostly self-sustaining. Just a little trimming, mulching, and composting is all it should need. Your wildlife garden will feature mostly low-maintenance native plants, and hopefully, most of your unwanted pests will be feeding your intended wildlife tenants.
Getting certified
Once you meet all five of these requirements you can apply to have your garden certified as a NWF Certified Wildlife HabitatTM.