Tips & Resources
Wild Ones Louisville
Tips for your backyard habitat:
- Keep dead leaves, limbs & logs.
- Less lawn, more high ranking plants from the Native Plant Finder, https://nativeplantfinder.nwf.org/.
- Keep bare spots for ground nesting bees.
- Choose a variety of native plants that bloom in different seasons.
- Reduce or eliminate pesticides.
- See “Resources” below.
Frequent mistakes:
- Too much lawn.
- Too few high ranking native plants.
- Hauling off dead leaves, limbs and logs. (These provide food and water for ecosystems.)
- Excessive use of pesticides.
- Shady areas: No native bushes.
- See “Resources” below.
What to do with sunny areas:
- Include a pollinator garden, aka monarch waystation.
- Popular plants for pollinator gardens:
- Milkweed, Goldenrod, Coneflowers, Brown-eyed Susans, Joe Pye Weed.
- Select plants and trees from the “Top 100”, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ei6ewlf2SN-OBjBhIsDv5X733FkeT3M_AWeB8Rj0qik/edit?usp=sharing
- See “Resources” below.
What to do with shady areas:
- Create a woodland garden, with leaves, ferns and spring ephemerals.
- Go for a multi-layered forest that includes native bushes, short trees and tall trees.
- Select plants and trees from the “Top 100”, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ei6ewlf2SN-OBjBhIsDv5X733FkeT3M_AWeB8Rj0qik/edit?usp=sharing
- See “Resources” below.
Resources
- Recommended Native Plant List For Starter Gardens.docx – Google Docs
- Wild Ones Louisville Group on Facebook
- Native Plant Finder of the National Wildlife Federation www.nwf.org/nativeplantfinder
- Hart’s “Top 100 list” (a cheat sheet for the Native Plant Finder in Louisville.)
- Wild Ones Louisville meetings
- Books by Doug Tallamy:
- “Nature’s Best Hope”
- “The Nature of Oaks”
- “The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden”
- “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens”
- Plant Identification tools
- Facebook groups
- Plant Identification
- Plant Ident 101
- Wild Ones Louisville Group
- Apps
- Picture This
- Picture Insect for insects
- iNaturalist
- Facebook groups
- Effects of mosquito sprays on humans, pets, and wild life by Colin Purrington