5 Sustainable Practices That Keep Wildlife Happy
Summer 2025. By JT Wilkinson: Many of our clients gravitated toward gardening with native plants in order to support local wildlife, and it’s true: If you plant it, they will come! There is an important caveat, however – how you maintain your space will determine if they stay.
We have 5 practices that make a dramatic difference. Try just one, and you are both likely to see more wildlife witness and wildlife engaging your space in new ways.
Limit Applied Water
Sometimes too much care feels overbearing to our native plants, and it isn’t just them! Most homeowners overwater succulents and lawns too. This force-feeding leads to unhealthy plant life, which attracts pests, which leads homeowners to apply chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Busy work that creates more work!
We keep it simple. We provide just the water foliage needs, precisely when and where they need it if at all possible. Hydrozoned, subsurface drip irrigation helps. Weather-based controllers do too, as we can pre-fuel foliage to withstand hot days and mitigate the impacts of dry windy days as well. (One huge bonus: As you reduce the water, you may experience fewer mosquito bites.)
Wildlife will need sources of water. We make sure they have it in features we can monitor and maintain. For example, flowing water features and frequently cleaned and refreshed bird baths.
Eliminate Chemicals
Chemical fertilizers and pesticides have a detrimental impact on the wildlife you’d like to keep around – and human and pet health as well. Instead of applying pesticides, we watch, wait and wonder. A pest to us looks like a delicious snack in the eyes of ladybugs, lacewings, birds, and so many other desirable friends. Waiting and watching that cycle can be really delightful – especially for kids.
Going chemical free doesn’t mean doing nothing. We do use all organic fertilizers, including hardworking mulch. When it comes to mosquitos, we’re quite active inspecting for and removing opportunities for their eggs and larvae throughout their lifecycle.
Taking just these two steps can make a huge difference in how wildlife experience your garden!
by Gordon Ownby
by Lesly Hall
by Gordon Ownby
Leave the Leaves – and Seeds and Space
If you follow native plant insta, you’re no stranger to the leave the leaves mantra! There’s good reason for all the reels. Wildlife often makes nests in leaves, and leaves also make a mulch highly compatible with the needs of the tree or shrub that dropped them.
We amplify the “leave the leaves” advice a bit. We add a layer of all organic mulch to keep the area looking tidy and to speed leaf decomposition. We keep an eye out for ground-nesting birds and bees as we do so. Even as we mulch, we make sure there are areas of bare soil within the garden for nests of ground-nesting birds and bees. When deadheading to stimulate more blooms, we leave some seed heads to provide perch and sustenance.
Garden Retreat, Lesly Hall
Urban Wildlife Habitat, Lesly Hall
Watch the Weeds!
Many fauna and pollinators rely upon one particular plant for habitat and a good meal. This is particularly true of our local butterflies (e.g. El Segundo Blue). Non-native foliage can easily outcompete some of these important plants. It is important to weed them out – yet, it can be hard to tell sprouts apart in the early stages.
How do we manage the conundrum? Well, knowing the plants in your design plan and where they are located helps. So do botanical markers. The greatest challenge for most pros are wildflowers, as they may choose to spout years after they were sprinkled. They’ll also migrate to where they’d like to be! When in doubt, we again “wait, watch and wonder.” It doesn’t take too long to differentiate buffalo grass sprouts from narrow leaf milkweed or a Desert Blue Bell from invasive mallow.
Use People Power
If you have taken the preceding actions one at a time, you can see that each makes a remarkable difference. This step really changes the game. Gas-powered mowers and blowers pollute with fumes and noise – wildlife enjoys neither! (In our experience, most humans feel the same.) The impact these machines have on little bodies is even more disruptive than their human health impacts – which isn’t great.
What is the alternative? We use people power – rakes, brooms, and clippers wherever possible. When we need powered maintenance equipment, we use electric tools. They make a huge difference – their quiet and fume-free operation means we don’t disturb our clients’ sleep, work, or the wildlife – and they also leave us feeling much better at the end of the day.
These are the ways we can improve habitat in weekly or monthly visits. If you enjoy a space daily, there are little habits you can layer on top to be sure wildlife and pollinators see your space as the bee’s knees.
Go Extra!
If you live-in or manage a space throughout the day, here are a few additional habitat-supporting steps that will have wildlife seeing your garden as something extra:
- Support dark skies by turning off lights, or
- Replace bright outdoor lights with amber-toned, and
- Use soaker hoses or tree stakes if you hand water
If you’re here, you likely know the joys of watching lizards do their push-ups, bees playing Thumbelina in mallow blooms, watching ladybugs hunt aphids, and even differentiating the “treeheretreehere” of an Oak Titmouse from the chatter of a Lesser Goldfinch family. Your garden just may be eligible for listing as a National Wildlife Federation listing as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. Check out their Habitat Essentials Worksheet.
