Hey did you know fall is a fabulous time for planting and making changes in your yard? Mother Nature gets her seeds ready and sends them out into the world in the fall, and so can we! It’s not as hot, the roots will have time to get established before spring, and maybe you’ll find yourself with a little more free time than in the spring and summer.
Did you know there are more than 40 MILLION acres of LAWN in the United States? This number has surely gone up since it was studied back in 2015. Creating lawns is the fastest way to kill a healthy, functioning ecosystem. Grass is nothing more than a vast monoculture that supports little or no life. If you want to be part of the change and create habitat instead, now is the time to get started!
There are many ways to create more habitat in your yard, and many of them don’t cost a thing. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
More Habitat, Less Lawn. Maximizing Your Outdoor Space for Wildlife
- Create brush piles with old branches and sticks.
- When far enough away from your house, leave dead trees standing to provide habitat for woodpeckers and other animals.
- In the fall, instead of cutting back all of your perennials, leave them standing through winter. These seed heads provide lots of great food for birds.
- Don’t rake your leaves! This is probably the easiest one of all and it means you’ll be free to do something more enjoyable. If you can’t leave the leaves where they fall, rake them up and put them in around trees, or in other wild areas.
- Don’t chop up your leaves for mulch, as doing this kills many animals like firefly larvae that require leaves for part of their lifecycle.
- Add water to your yard with bird baths, fountains, bowls or other features.
- Shrink your lawn with habitat islands.
- Shrink your lawn with habitat strips along your driveway.
- Turn off your outdoor lights. Outdoor lights left on all the time disrupt a lot of animals including fireflies, frogs, and birds. Instead of leaving them on all night, put them on motion sensors, or just turn them on when you need them.
- Don’t let your cat roam free, as cats kill a LOT of animals, including birds, lizards, frogs, snakes, butterflies and anything else they can catch.
- Stop using pesticides, as they kill insects that we need for a healthy, functioning ecosystem.
- Replace invasive plants with native plants. Native plants have evolved side by side with insects and other animals and have complex relationships.
- Don’t support mosquito spraying services as these kill ALL insects, not just mosquitoes. We NEED insects!
- Don’t use products designed to kill including rodenticides, Chem Lawn, and others like it.
- Install a bat box.
