You are now committed to sharing your backyard with the local natives.
Where do you begin?
Let’s use the simple framework of a business plan:
Who are your customers?
Bees, butterflies, birds
What problem are your customers seeking to solve?
Finding food, water, shelter, safety, and a place to breed
How will you solve their problem?
I will optimize my property with landscaping choices that are attractive to native birds and insects.
What is your value prop?
"My backyard is loaded with the food you seek, fresh water, shelter, and is considered the honeymoon capital of the biosphere!"
To execute your business plan, you must meet the commitment of your value prop.
Here are seven action items to launch your plan:
Set up bird feeders, birdhouses, and birdbaths
This step covers three and a half problems of your avian demographic. Feeders, nest boxes, and birdbaths provide food, shelter, water, and for some bird species, a safe place to raise their young.
Reduce your lawn
Suburban lawns offer nothing to local wildlife. Each square foot of sterile grass is a lost opportunity to solve your customer's problems. . Replace selected areas of your lawn with small pollinator gardens, ponds, native shrubs, and trees. These changes will convert an unproductive area with wedges of seasonal color while animating the yard with the pollinators and birds these habitats attract.
Landscape with native plants
Our native plants are as colorful, heartier and require less maintenance than alien plants. Natives such as cardinal flowers, ironweed, or coneflowers decorate your yard with seasonal color while attracting the bees, butterflies, and birds that add a new dimension to your landscape scenery.
Welcome caterpillars
If you are interested in attracting nature to your property, you are in the caterpillar business! Caterpillars are a critical intersection for two of your three customer targets- butterflies and birds.
Butterflies need host plants to feed and breed. Butterfly hosts are native plants unique to each species, such as milkweed (monarchs) and spicebush (swallowtail). Butterflies will flock to your yard to lay their eggs on their host plants. Before forming their chrysalis, their caterpillars feed on these host plants, or a foraging bird parent finds them.
Ninety-six percent of US terrestrial birds feed insects to their young. Caterpillars have the ideal size, shape, and nutritional profile to raise nestlings. According to Douglas Tallamy (Bring Nature to Your Backyard), one nest of three chickadee chicks require 10,000 caterpillars to become self-sufficient. An abundance of caterpillars on your property will convert bird visits to bird tenants!
Discontinue using chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides
You've heard this one before. Insecticides poison your soil and kill all insects on contact. This poison makes its way up the food chain. Is the lawn treatment necessary? Research natural alternatives for each chemical approach and use sparingly.
Wren with caterpillar prey
Keep your cat indoors
According to the American Bird Conservatory, domestic cats kill 2.4 billion birds per year. When your cat is outside, it follows its instinct to hunt- and they are good at it! To satisfy your cat’s interest in the outside world, set up pollinator gardens in front of your southern facing windows and hang a bird feeder in view. Our indoor cats are drawn to these windows every day to enjoy the sun and the show!
Pace yourself and enjoy!
These physical changes to your property and philosophical adjustments to your landscaping's care and maintenance are simple steps to kick start the revitalization of your property.
You will be amazed at how quickly the local natives find your yard.
Attracting nature to your backyard is a lifetime journey. Each season brings new visitors and tenants to your backyard. I have been at it for decades, and I am just getting started!
One of our cats staring down a praying mantis at the pollinator garden window.
All photographs were taken on our one-acre property in eastern PA.
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