Wildscaping.com has gone live!
We now have a separate web site dedicated to converting gardens into wildlife habitats. This site includes information on birds, butterflies, insects. plants, and a variety of other information resources. If you're looking of our "Plant of the Month" listings, these have been moved to the new Plant Profiles section of Wildscaping.com, reformatted in alphabetical order.
Our
studio is located on a third acre at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains
in Sherman Oaks. When we need a break from the computers and technology,
we can often be found outside, converting our grounds into a wildlife
sanctuary.
Development in the mountains has displaced habitat for many native species, so on our lot we declared a truce: We get the building, and the wildlife gets everything else. For this unique "industry", the services we provide include food, water, shelter, and nesting materials. In return we get hours of enjoyment from watching the local wildlife, and trying to figure out what in the world they think they're doing...
Our mini-botanical garden now contains over 400 different species and varieties of plants, including over 100 varieties of salvias and a 12' x 15' greenhouse for propagation. We place a large emphasis on California native plants as well as drought-tolerant Southwestern and Mediterranean species, virtually all chosen because they provide food or shelter for animals, birds, and butterflies.
Los Angeles has what is known as a Mediterranean climate, which is found in only a few select places in the world. Cool wet winters and dry hot summers mean that plants have adapted to a growing season that's the opposite of the typical garden (East Coast or English). A recent survey showed roughly 3 out of 4 plants sold in Southern California are utterly unsuited to this climate, which means they are either destined to die, or will require an unnatural life support system of excessive water and chemicals to keep alive. Meanwhile, California is already home to over 6,000 species of plants. Many of these beautiful plants are found nowhere else in the world, provide food for wildlife, and most importantly thrive in our climate. Therefore, over the years we've removed all the ivy, juniper and other "junk" from our property, and planted mostly native trees, shrubs and flowers that are thriving on little care and water. After all, nobody "gardens" the mountains (as native landscapers like to say).
A
bird bath/waterfall was a great addition to the garden, as all birds need
fresh water. Besides drinking, they bath frequently to keep their feathers
groomed and healthy. Chris refers to the bath as the community swimming
pool for birds. When a "party" starts up, it quickly becomes elbow-to-elbow
(or is that wing-to-wing?) standing room only, and even the hummingbirds
enjoy dipping their tummies in the waterfall. Our three-tiered waterfall
started as a kit from Avian
Aquatics. To hear what it sounds like (including visits from goldfinches,
mourning doves, bush tits, hummingbirds, and others), click
here for an 8+ minute MP3 file (11.8 Meg).
In addition to wildlife ranging from squirrels through deer to coyote and even a bobcat(!), we've spotted a good variety of birds on the property, including Allen's, Rufous, Black Chin and Anna's hummingbirds, red-tailed and sharp-shinned hawks (on several occasions, we've rescued baby red-tails that fall or are cut out of their nests on an annual basis, it seems), Merlin falcons, hooded orioles, Nuttall's woodpeckers, a wide variety of warblers including orange-crowned, yellow, yellow-rumped, Wilson's, Townsend's, Black-Throated Gray, and we suspect others (they all can't resist water), titmice, bush tits, wren tits, house, winter, and Bewick's wrens, hermit thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets, dozens (some might say hundreds!) of American and lesser goldfinches, house finches, song, house, chipping, gold-crowned, and white-crowned sparrows, mourning doves, band-tailed pigeons, northern flickers, western tanagers, occasional mobs of cedar waxwings, California and spotted towhees, phainopeplas, scrub jays (despised because they eat the young of others), dark-eyed juncos, black phoebes, black-headed grosbeaks, mockingbirds, flycatchers, vireo (including a warbling vireo), a thrasher, Great Horned owls that serenade us at night, and other birds we've yet to identify.
While
some birds eat seed, many exist on a diet of insects, so we refrain from
using any poisons on the plants or insects. It took a couple of years,
but we now have a healthy self-regulating ecosystem. However, as the bird
population increased, it became a dangerous place for caterpillars to
hang out, so we now "kidnap" and raise Monarchs in our handmade
"caterpillar condo". We propagate milkweed (the host plant Monarch caterpillars
require) for others interested in trying to increase the population
of everyone's favorite butterfly. We released an average of 100 monarchs
a year (our peak was 500 in 2003)! To learn
more about gardening for butterflies in Los Angeles, check out "Suggestions
for L.A. Butterfly Gardeners" by Margaret Huffman, on the LA-NABA
website.
It takes a little while to get familiar with a new way of gardening (where you plant in October, our "spring"), and a new palette of plant names. But when the fog clears, you'll wonder if there's a conspiracy in the regular mainstream nurseries ("buy plants in spring, plant them just when the weather hits 90, water every day, plants die anyway, you replace them next spring, we make more money..."). We've even seen plants for sale at our local "Home World" equivalents that need "cool moist" areas. Hello?
Learning
about this more sensible approach to gardening has been like learning
about a secret underground movement. In response, we've expanded this
page to an entire web site dedicated to native landscaping for wildlife:
If you would like more details about anything mentioned above, we love to share what we've learned so far. We're also happy to hear from other wildscape gardeners. Please email us at: trish@wildscaping.com
Happy wildlife watching!
Trish & Chris Meyer
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