Plants & Pollinators - In Your Yard!

By Alice Sutton
A lawn is like a desert, but we can create a beautiful habitat for wildlife literally in our own back yards. Here are some links, steps and tips to get you started.

My Favorite Resources
Links from Dr. Doug Tallamy, Environmental Entomologist

• VIDEO: Nature’s Best Hope
• Next Steps for Nature
• Homegrown National Parks Learn more and register your yard with Homegrown National Parks!

Other Resources:

• Top Ten Things New Native Gardeners Need to Know
• National Wildlife Federation
• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
• How to grow goldenrod
• How to grow coneflowers (echinacea)

Steps & Tips:

1. Add a meadow strip along the fence or on one edge of your lawn —stop mowing & weeding there. Add native flowers and grasses as you can.
   • Native Grasses and Sedges: Smart Choices for Better Landscapes
   • Native Grasses for SC
2. Change up a chain link fence! Add host plants like Carolina jessamine (poisonous), passionflower, climbing aster, and Virginia creeper.
3. Birdbath Renovation!
   1. Out My Backdoor: Birdbaths Key to Wildlife Abundance
4. Attract pollinators to your garden with top 5 annual plant picks: Snapdragons, Marigolds, Zinnias, Cosmos, Alyssum
5. Always double check that the plant you are buying is native! Don’t trust the person working in the nursery—look it up!…There are American hollies, English hollies, and Asian hollies. There are American magnolias, Asian magnolias, and South American magnolias. There are salvias from North America, South America, Asia, and the Mediterranean…
6. Don’t plant pink-flowered milkweed—it can take over your garden!
7. Look for butterfly weed!
8. Keep cats indoors! In the United States, cats kill an estimated 1.3 to 4.0 billion birds annually. This makes cats the single greatest source of human-related bird mortality.
9. Reduce mosquito population with mosquito dunks
10. Fend off squirrels with bloodmeal fertilizer.
11. Recycle plain cardboard by using it in the garden to prevent weeds (cover cardboard lightly with mulch).