How to Attract Wildlife To Your garden

Welcome all species of guests to your garden

While some homeowners strive to rid their landscapes of insect and animal pests, others try to entice visitors from the animal kingdom to their gardens.
Many outdoor creatures that accent a beautiful landscape are also helpful participants in the community. Bees pollinate fruits and flowers, keeping gardens productive. Toads, frogs and lizards are fascinating to watch and eat pesky insects at a ferocious rate. Dragonflies, ladybugs and spiders also eat great numbers of unwelcome insects, such as aphids and mites. Here are tips for encouraging wildlife to come to your garden.
• Diversify
The more diverse the plants in your garden, the more wildlife you are likely to attract. Set up a complex mini-ecosystem in your back yard by choosing a variety of plants.
• Don't be too tidy
Humans appreciate neat gardens, but animals thrive in messier places. Removing faded flowers keeps the garden attractive and flowers bearing longer, but birds enjoy flowers that have gone to seed. Brush piles are an ideal place for butterflies and other creatures to overwinter.
• Provide cover
Most animals need a protected area. Shade trees provide protective cover for animals while fruit-bearing trees and shrubs provide food. Even a vine-covered wall can provide a potential nesting site for tiny birds.
• Garden organically
Chemicals throw off nature's balance and can kill helpful as well as harmful creatures. Many organic practices attract wildlife. Adding compost or other organic matter to the soil, for example, attracts earthworms. They, in turn, contribute to the health of the bed. Their constant burrowing tills and aerates the soil. They ingest organic wastes and deposit humus-rich castings in it. Earthworms also attract robins and other birds.
• Go native
Most native plants help feed or host local wildlife. They provide food for adult birds and good nectar for local butterflies as well as shelter for birds and other cre
• Go native
Most native plants help feed or host local wildlife. They provide food for adult birds and good nectar for local butterflies as well as shelter for birds and other creatures.


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