Like many other gardeners, Sarah F. Jayne felt inspired by the writings of the entomologist and wildlife ecologist Douglas W. Tallamy to create a more biodiverse, habitat-style landscape — to garden with the intention of sharing her property with nature.
But as she worked to increase the native-plant quotient in her garden in Oxford, Pa., by removing invasives, and taking other key steps, she realized that despite decades of gardening experience, she kept coming up short. The finer points of everything from plant choices to the tactical how-to’s of creating and caring for this very different style of garden eluded her.
Ms. Jayne, whose background is in agriculture and education, came to one especially tricky realization about another shortfall in her grasp of how things work. Her efforts at welcoming wildlife sometimes risked negative unintended consequences.
If more birds were enjoying the garden’s enhanced offerings, that increased the chances of often-fatal window strikes that are estimated to kill more than a billion birds in the United States each year. Artificial light at night confused insects and caused harm. A bucket left out that caught some rain became a trap some creature could drown in. How and when she mowed represented a big potential danger to animals including frogs, toads and snakes.
“We have a duty, I think, to protect those creatures that we invite to our property,” Ms. Jayne said. “The wildlife was one of my main motivations for planting, and yet I was unaware of some of the ecological traps that I was setting up for them.”
In the process of rethinking her landscape, Ms. Jayne did the homework to answer each question that arose. She tracked down such necessities as location-specific native plant lists; details on how managing leaf litter left behind by the increasingly popular “leave the leaves” fall cleanup mandate; and methods of preparing lawn being transitioned to more diverse plantings.
Last year, she shared all she learned in a self-published book, “Nature’s Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem,” an exhaustive reference of step-by-step instructions and resource lists.
And her book also contains the tenets of what she now calls her new “protection-first mind-set” to safeguard the wildlife visitors that Dr. Tallamy’s 2020 book “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard,” in particular, had helped her attract.
Some tactics for avoiding inadvertent harm are familiar, and straightforward, like keeping pet cats indoors so they cannot hunt birds, or cleaning bird feeders regularly to avoid spreading disease among wild birds.
Others, Ms. Jayne found, involved more finesse, including these key protection-first actions:
Reduce artificial light at night.
Ms. Jayne begins her opening chapter with what she calls, “a simple but powerful action: Turn off the lights.” One hazard of nighttime light pollution is that it attracts and disorients insects, exhausting them as they circle or even collide with its source, contributing to their drastic population declines.
Most moths, for instance, whose caterpillars are a primary food source for baby songbirds, are night-fliers, and may be heavily impacted.
We can best reduce such harms by closing shades and curtains at night, said Ms. Jayne, and limiting the use of outdoor lighting to only essentials. Choose fixtures designed to direct light just where it’s needed, she recommended, not upward where it may do extra harm.
Place fixtures on motion sensors to illuminate just when needed, and fit them with amber or yellow LED bulbs, not white. (When shopping, note that lumens, not wattage, is the more accurate gauge of brightness; least bright is best.)
Changing bulbs won’t protect fireflies, though. During their short mating season, the nighttime flashing of males and females signaling to each other to pair up is a critical connection that even amber or yellow bulbs illuminated at night can foil.
To prevent bird strikes, install collision-preventing devices on risky glass surfaces.
Birds don’t recognize glass as a solid barrier when reflections instead appear to show sky or habitat that looks like something they can fly through. (Maybe surprisingly, Ms. Jayne learned, birds can also be deceived when there is no reflection, but there appears to be inviting habitat inside — something as innocent as a houseplant-filled indoor windowsill.)
To render high-risk windows and glass doors safer, she recommends the American Bird Conservancy’s guide to different products and methods. It details tested collision deterrents, including various ready-made decals, tapes, and stickers to apply on the outside of glass, plus do-it-yourself versions.
Another effective approach, and one used at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, involves hanging parallel lengths of eighth-inch parachute cording, spaced no greater than about four inches apart, on the outside of windows, forming what resembles a curtain of cords. Do-it-yourself instructions or made-to-order versions are available from Acopian BirdSavers.
For her potentially troublesome windows, Ms. Jayne chose the decal route, and made her own in leaf shapes cut from peel-and-stick vinyl wallpaper.
Close spacing is essential; a single large sticker, or multiple wide-spaced markings, won’t provide sufficient protection. “Gaps not more than two inches apart, vertically and horizontally, protects most birds from flying in,” said Ms. Jayne, “except when they’re being chased by a predator.”
Another tactic to reduce strikes is simply to put up window screens — even on windows that don’t open.
Mow less frequently, and more consciously.
We need to think — and check — before we mow, said Ms. Jayne, avoiding times when frogs, toads, salamanders and snakes are likely to be hunting. With amphibians in particular, don’t mow unless the grass is thoroughly dry, as moist conditions are inviting, and stop before dusk begins to beckon to these nocturnal hunters.
Walk the space first to find and nudge vulnerable animals toward safety. Then be intentional about your mowing pattern, to help lead them gradually to shelter.
If planted beds are situated at the lawn’s edges, start mowing in the lawn interior and move gradually outward in a concentric pattern toward the beds that animals can escape into. Or, said Ms. Jayne, add a planted island bed in the middle of a grassy area and mow concentrically from the perimeter of the lawn inward, “to allow creatures to hop or slither into that refuge.”
Raising your mower to the highest setting, at four inches or more, will also spare more small lives than a close cropping.
Provide year-round water to wildlife, but make sure to keep safety in mind.
Probably no garden feature will do more to attract a biodiverse audience than offering water year-round. Badly planned, though, water features are dangerous, and each one needs an exit ramp designed into it to prevent drownings.
Water troughs and ponds with liners often have straight sides that are unscalable, but a little wooden gangplank or a pile of strategically placed large stones to climb up and out on can change that.
Remember to cover any buckets left outdoors, or store them on their sides to prevent water collecting in them and creating death traps.
“Even if it’s not a big creature that drowns, like a bird,” said Ms. Jayne, “it can be some insect that would have been better as food for a bird, or just to live its life. We need to share this place.”
One more watery tip: Change the water every couple of days in the birdbath, and give it a good scrubbing weekly.
When she started transforming her garden, little did Ms. Jayne know that Dr. Tallamy, whose words got her started, lived just two properties away.
That changed one day while she was weeding beneath a persimmon tree in her yard, and bent to pick up a tiny scrap of paper. It turned out to be the corner of an envelope bearing his return address.
She didn’t make contact, though, until she was starting to feel a degree of confidence about her garden progress.
She recalled her initial outreach: “I wrote to Dr. Tallamy, introduced myself, and said, ‘I love your books, but this stuff you’re recommending is hard to do. You need a step-by-step guide to go along with your books.’”
“Great idea,” he replied. “Write it.”
As she had in the garden, she followed his instructions.
Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and podcast A Way to Garden, and a book of the same name.
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