Habitat Gardening

wildflowerwednesday

This time: Gardening to build butterfly populations; Preparing for habitat over winter.

Important news for you, Garden Heroes.

A recent study found that species are being lost in the hottest parts of temperate regions even faster than in the tropics. That might sound discouraging, but it also means your help is even more impactful. Your garden or meadow of native plants is a part of a network that pollinators can use to survive and thrive. Your garden can play a meaningful role in reversing population decline.

If you’ve already added some native species to your space, that’s a great start. Your next step is to actively support species that already exist in and around your garden. Your goal is to increase the number of individuals of a species that live in your garden.

So how do you build larger populations? Using butterflies as an example, the process comes down to these steps:

1. Observe

Spend time watching your garden at different times of day. Make a note of butterflies that visit. When you see a butterfly that you do not know, take photos from multiple angles. Many species look similar, and small details matter for identification.

2. Identify Unknown Butterflies

Use a beginner-friendly guide or app to identify what you’re seeing. Some popular options are listed in the Resources section.

3. Find the Missing Need

When you look up life cycle information for butterflies, you will find that adults prefer certain kinds of flowers for nectar.

You will also find information about “host plants.” The adult butterfly lays eggs on its host plant and the caterpillars hatch out and start eating like mad. Caterpillars are very particular about their diet. They often eat only one or two types of plants.

You can make a simple note page to keep track of visiting butterflies and how to support them.

It might be organized like this.

Butterfly Species

  • Host Plant(s)
  • Support Steps

Here are a couple of examples from my habitat garden. I saw two types of butterflies – Buckeyes and Tiger Swallowtails – on my native perennials and looked up host plant information so that I could support a larger population for each of these species.

Buckeye

Host plant: Plantain

Support steps:

  • Allow plantains to grow in native plant beds.
  • Attempt to relocate plantains growing in the lawn, or collect their seeds and move them to native plant beds.
  • Monitor the plants for signs that caterpillars are eating them.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Host plants:

  • Cottonwood; Willow; Tulip tree

These trees are available in nearby woods.

Support steps:

  • Maintain tall-flowering native plants to provide nectar for a larger population.
  • Ensure flowers are available from spring through fall.

4. Support

These observations and notes suggested that I could support Buckeye populations by providing more plantains, a common “weed” that is being removed from surrounding suburban lawns. I could support Tiger Swallowtail populations by providing more tall native nectar plants.

Once you find the need for your butterfly populations, you are ready to increase their numbers. You might incorporate more host plants into your garden or increase certain types of nectar plants.

A Tiger Swallowtail, yellow with black stripes, feeds on a tall orange flower with seed heads. The seed heads are being left for birds to feed on and to grow the following year. The tall, thick stems will be left in this garden bed for beneficial insects to overwinter inside.

With this kind of support, you can increase the type and number of butterflies you see daily in the summer. Let me tell you that sitting among fluttering butterflies is one of the more calming things you can experience.

Butterflies are just an example here. You can do the same for moths. Native bees are somewhat easier because they do not generally have host plants, but they do need places for their nests and larva. The big picture is: Look at the creature that visits, identify it, find the need, and then support it in your habitat garden.

Seasonal Continuous Improvement: Autumn

When you're managing a Habitat Garden, what you do and do not do in Autumn is different than traditional gardening. One of the things you need to do is evaluate your late season flowering. One of the tasks you can ignore is “clean-up” of most dead or dying plants. Shocking, I know.

🌸Find Your Fall Flowering Gap

You might be surprised at what you see in your habitat garden in mid-fall: few flowers. Most of the native species you plant in the spring and summer complete their flowering cycle by this time. Sure, you can deadhead many to keep them going much longer, but eventually they fade out.

You might see butterflies, native bees and other pollinators looking for something to eat at this time before the first frost hits (if frost happens where you live).

It is very important for your habitat garden to supply a variety of flowers throughout your growing season. If you do have few or no flowering plants in the fall, then plan to identify late-season flowering native plants for your region that you can have ready to go for the following Autumn.

This is not difficult. When I did this, I found that in my region there were many types of goldenrod and asters that met this need and they were easily available as seed. To do the same, you need a native plant reference specific for your “ecoregion’ and you can find those in the Resources section.

Sprays of tall Goldenrod – up to seven feet tall – fill a space in a native plant garden in early fall.

🌾Save the Stems

Other than checking for number of flowers, appropriate actions to take in the fall are different depending on your region. In the Resources section below, you will find more specific advice for plants and tasks in your region for Autumn.

While you are noticing your fall habitat garden, you might see some dead stems of plants that have gone by. Your initial tendency may be to remove these – as is expected in traditional gardening. You might even plan to transfer the stems over to the compost pile.

But it far is better to retain healthy standing stalks and seedheads. In Nature, flower stems remain long after the flower dies. Stalks are potential nesting/overwintering habitat. They will definitely be needed by beneficial invertebrates in the spring, so you will want to keep them available.

🍂Leave The Leaves

You've heard it before. Leave fallen leaves below the trees. This allows certain insects to follow their instincts and drop right down into the leaf layer for overwintering.

But have you heard to leave them whole? The Xerces Society says shredded leaves do not provide the same cover as whole leaves, and that shredding may destroy insect eggs, caterpillars, and cocoons. It recommends using a rake or blower rather than a mower when moving leaves so they remain intact.

It's not always possible to leave leaves under trees. If you need other options, I listed some of my tricks in a previous Seasonal Improvement section here.

Abundant bright purple berries of the beautyberry shrub. These last for many weeks in Autumn in my garden, feeding a variety of birds and mammals, maybe even box turtles.

🦋 Tools for Identifying Insects

This is a great tool if you are just starting out. It uses image recognition to identify plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms through your phone camera. There's no registration so you can see how you like identification.

This is the standard tool for enthusiasts and citizen scientists (If you are  habitat gardener, consider yourself a citizen scientist.) You can document observations, and other members of the community can contribute identifications. iNaturalist specifically encourages insect observations as a way to learn about local ecosystems and contribute to biodiversity and conservation research. Check out this guide to get a feel for this app: iNaturalist's beginner guide to insect watching

This app is made for people who want more information about an insect after photographing it, like a habitat gardener. The good news is that it provides detailed identification reports, including information about life cycles and host plants. The bad news is that some features require a subscription.

🦋 Tools for Identifying Late Season Flowering Perennials for Your Region

The Xerces Society has collaborated with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to create plant lists that are attractive to native bees, bumble bees, honey bees, and other beneficial insects, as well as plant lists with value as nesting materials for native bees. These lists can be narrowed down with additional criteria such as state, soil moisture, bloom time, and sunlight requirements.

Includes lists for every state and province plus much more.

🦋 Guides for Fall Tasks in Your Region

#HabitatGardening #WildflowerWednesday #BiodiversityGardening #Gardening #NativePlants #Nature #Environment #Conservation #Biodiversity #Invertebrates #Pollinators #BirdConservation #Wildlife #Birds

I’m Joe Wynne, a gardener since 1965 when I started as a helper for my grandmother. We maintained irises then and I still have those plants today. I’m a former Tennessee State Park Naturalist, who now focuses on making my garden a habitat for native plants and native bees, birds and butterflies. It’s working! I share what I learn.

Follow me on Mastodon. See articles from others in my magazine on Flipboard: Habitat Gardening

© Joe Wynne 2025-2026

This time: Plant your seedlings; Improve preparations for extreme climate conditions

Your seedlings are ready; the soil is prepared and now comes the rewarding part: planting. Whether you’ve grown native plants from seed, picked up healthy starts from a nursery, or are ready with direct-sow seeds, this is the big moment!

Take a moment to make sure you get everything right.

🌿 Consider spacing. Before you begin, take a little time to review the spacing guidance for each species you’re planting. Different natives have different preferences for spacing. Following those recommendations will give your plants the best chance to establish quickly and reduce problems later.

If you're planting multiple species in the same bed, and they all have different spacing requirements, it can get a bit complicated. I have a small metal tape measure that I have used for these situations. The good news is that you really just have to do this once per bed. You are planting perennials after all.

🌻 Follow your garden design for placement.  Ideally, you’ve already roughed out a basic design while planning your plant purchases (previously covered here). That doesn’t mean every plant has to go in an exact spot, but having a general layout makes planting days smoother. Just like traditional gardening, native plant gardens can be formal, informal, or somewhere in between.

Set out your seedlings, starts, and seeds so that you can assess where each will go. Some seeds that you started before planting season may not have germinated. (It happens!) Check to see how this effects where you place what items.

I live in Suburbia, so I have this length of space on the far side of the driveway that is perfect for a mini-prairie design. It also holds any extra plants or seeds I end up not finding a place for.

🌱 Consider the seeds. Don't forget your direct-sow seeds! They may have been forgotten in all the effort to grow seedlings in the off-season. For designed beds, leave a space for seeds where their height will fit. Again, follow directions for spacing and consider nearby plants.

🚿 Follow traditional gardening best practices in early days. Once planted, keep the soil consistently moist for the first few weeks. That steady moisture helps young roots expand into the surrounding soil and settle in. This is no different than traditional gardening.

There are many more tips in the Resources section below.

Here is a portion of my yellow/purple native plant bed, showing a shrub in the background, American Beautyberry, which has bright purple berries along its branches. In the foreground, Anise Hyssop, coordinates with purple spikes of flowers. Both of these had survived two periods of four weeks in summer heat with no rain. This is becoming more common here. The shrub suffered – you can see leaves are sparse – but survive it did. I did not water so that I could see how resilient these native plants can be. (That’s why I’m not embarrassed to show this pic.) The non-natives in my garden needed water constantly.

Seasonal Continuous Improvement: Late Spring / Early Summer

Think about last year. How did your native plants garden handle dry spells? Or extreme heat? Or higher than expected rainfall? Or whatever significant problems you experience in your area at some point in the growing season? Think about improvements that will help your plants thrive. Some examples:

  • Improve physical water retention methods. I started shaping certain beds in curves to hold water from hard rains where too much would run off.
  • Extend garden beds away from growing shrubs and trees. It’s very common to place plants too close to shrubs. After a couple of years, everyone is fighting over space, water, and nutrients.
  • Too much water always collecting in an area, drowning your natives? Change out plants to favor those that like it wet and make a rain garden!
  • Manage mini-prairie flowers seeding into your adjacent lawn by expanding the bed! The lawn is less important! Of course, if this is going to get you in trouble with neighbors or the HOA, be careful.

Start planning in early summer to complete urgent improvements. This gives you time to perfect designs, gather materials, and be ready for the best time to complete them.

Here are a couple of tips that are generally useful.

Compost builds the soil into root-thriving paradise. Habitat gardening, where you leave the soil layers intact, benefits from the use of compost even more than traditional gardening. A layer of compost ensures the soil is alive with beneficial insects, bacteria, and fungi, all working together to provide your native plant roots with what they need.

Some native plants that you grow may prefer soil that is found normally in your area and not the deeply “fluffy” soil that is often the goal of traditional gardening. You don’t need a large layer of compost for these plants, just enough to simulate organic matter that naturally accumulates on the soil surface.

Becoming a native plant gardener lets you see the importance of starting your own compost operation. You can check the many resources for composting if you are new to it. I have a simple small bucket collector in my kitchen and a simple cube bin in my back yard that produces the vast majority of what I need all year. I have added some links to get you started below in the Resources section.

Mulching for natives is not the same as traditional gardening. A good layer of mulch helps retain precious soil moisture, suppresses weeds that compete for nutrients, and moderates soil temperatures as days grow hotter. This is all good.

But in native gardens, we need to think about ground-dwelling bees who cannot reach the soil under traditional mulch. We need to think about how modern mulches with long-lasting color have dyes that cause the mulch to form a dense, hard layer that beneficial insects cannot penetrate.

Instead, create your own mulch from leaves, even small natural debris available locally. You can even include the compost you are making.

More about composting in the Resources section below.

Resources

How Far Apart Should I Plant Native Plants?

An excellent spacing reference for beginners. It walks through how mature plant size, growth habit, and planting density influence plant health, weed pressure, and long‑term maintenance, helping gardeners avoid overcrowding or overly sparse beds.

Guide for Beginning Native Plant Gardeners

A thorough introduction to native gardening fundamentals from Grow Native!. This guide explains how native plants grow and spread over time, why proper spacing matters, and how different design styles – from formal borders to naturalistic plantings – affect layout decisions.

Caring for Your Native Seedlings

From the Wild Seed Project, a practical, easy‑to‑read guide covering the critical early stages of seedling care. Topics include watering, crowding, repotting, and understanding the slower first‑year growth common to many native perennials.

Compost and the Native Plant Garden

This guide from The Wild Ones explores how compost fits into native plant gardening, including when it helps and when nature does the work on its own.

The Beginner’s Guide to Composting

A simple, no‑jargon overview that emphasizes composting as a natural, low‑stress process from Compost Magazine.

Compost 101: How to Start Composting for Beginners

From Epic Gardening,_ a clear, science‑based introduction that explains what compost is, why piles fail, and how compost improves garden soil.

#HabitatGardening #BiodiversityGardening #Gardening #NativePlants #Nature #Environment #Conservation #Biodiversity #Invertebrates #SolarPunk #WildflowerWednesday

I’m Joe Wynne, a gardener since 1965 when I started as a helper for my grandmother. We maintained irises then and I still have those plants today. I’m a former Tennessee State Park Naturalist, who now focuses on making my garden a habitat for native plants and native bees, birds and butterflies. It’s working! I share what I learn.

Follow me on Mastodon. See articles from others in my magazine on Flipboard: Habitat Gardening

© Joe Wynne 2025-2026