Backyard Habitat

I had my first certification site visit last year. You can read the background here. That post is a good explanation of the work I’ve done and what the program is. Why did I end up doing this? It wasn’t my goal when I started building my garden. But the stress and dread of climate change made me feel helpless and depressed for the future. In this small way I can do something for native plants and animals.

The initial visit went really well. For the Silver level 5% of my yard needs to be native and I’d almost met that requirement at 4%. I don’t have any of the invasive species/weeds. I was working on removing the ivy creeping through the fence from the neighbor’s yard. This is the before picture of the ivy from a few summers ago:

SO AWFUL!!!!!! I hired someone to remove a lot of it a few years ago and then I worked on it for a long time. I am in the maintenance phase of trying to keep it from my side of the fence. It’s hard. This is what it looked like this winter:

We recently had the fence rebuilt and it looks really nice (and will hopefully help with some of the other neighbor’s weeds and ivy coming through).

I have a TON of plants, not all natives. But I *do* have 80 natives and of those, 69 are on the Portland Plant List, which is a hyper local list. This is important because they support local birds, bees, pollinators etc with the flowers, seeds, leaves and berries that come from these native plants. For example, there are certain plants that feed Monarch butterflies on their migrations.

There are a lot of non-natives I love (like lavender, roses and dahlias). But I am so happy with how the native plants are thriving.

I have 4 out of the 5 vegetation layers and I have several of these:

• Wildlife water feature (natural source, maintained bird or bug bath)
• Bird or bat nest boxes (appropriate to native species)
• Pollinator and beneficial insect nesting habitat (i.e. rock piles, bundles of stems and branches, mason bee house)
• Snag or nurse log
• Reduce outdoor lighting during bird migration (March-May, Sept-Nov)
• Reduce bird window collisions
• Native pollinator meadow which bloom through the growing season

My brother got me a bat box for Christmas. I have a little mason bee house, I have bird houses, I have a few bird baths. I made rock piles and snags/nurse logs.

My parents got me a planting table for Christmas as well, which has been so helpful!

This was HARD WORK. Back-breaking. Hours and hundreds of dollars. Of course, you can do it on a SMALLER level. If your area doesn’t have a program like this, you can still do it on your own on a smaller scale. Research your area and find out what are native plants. Google companion planting with those native plants. I highly recommend experimenting with seeds (cheaper), especially if you can join a local facebook gardening group where you can share. I’d get dirt delivered in bulk (cheaper than bags). Start with one garden bed. Sometimes it’s all it takes. 🙂

I am really proud of the work I did and so happy with how it turned out. I am excited to see how the garden evolves as things mature.

In May I had my site visit and got certified at GOLD LEVEL! (The second level.) I was suprised and SO happy! I just got my sign and sticker:

And I recently started a new blog. That’s what I’ve been up to. 🙂