Fall Colors Bring Winter Habitat

Native gardens are most beautiful when they function well. Watching fall bees crowding around New England Asters and Goldenrod brings to mind chipmunks with cheeks bulging with seeds and nuts. All the small creatures are making their gather before the cold of winter, and a well-designed native garden makes this happen with incredible beauty.

Design

What makes a beautiful garden that serves birds, pollinators, and wildlife with food and shelter? It all starts with a good design. Here are some design principles to follow:

Know your garden

Hardiness zone, soil type, sunlight, and moisture are all design drivers. Observations while performing garden chores will tell you this information. I’ve found while gardening that my soil is a nice loam on top of heavy clay, and it holds quite a bit of moisture because I have managed the health of my soil. The yard runs from deep shade to sun/shade, while the rest is full sun.

There are different places to find your Hardiness Zone. This site provided by our friends at Northern Gardener Magazine is a great resource.

Design in layers

Landscapes and nature have layers consisting of ground covers, herbaceous (soft tissue) plants, shrubs, understory trees, canopy trees, and vines. You do not need all layers in each garden bed, but your yard and neighborhood probably have them all.  Also note that there is a lot of height range in each layer. Soft tissue plants include 24” blazing star as well as a 7’ tall New England aster. The groundcover layer can be designed to act as a living mulch by occupying all the free space under the soft tissue plants. By providing a crowded ground layer, you will suppress weeds, improve soil health, and conserve moisture. This website provides great information on matrix design, which is another term for layered design.

Provide Shelter, Food, and Variety

A high-functioning native garden will provide shelter, food, and have 3 different species in bloom all season long. Shelter consists of trees and shrubs for birds, insect eggs, and larva. Birds nest in trees, shrubs, and elsewhere in a native garden, plus they feed newly hatched insect larva to baby birds in the spring. Evergreens create a cozy place for winter birds, and grasses shelter many pollinators while others use leaves as cover. Some curl up into leaves, and many bumble bees burrow into a pile of leaves and sleep through the winter. Leaving some bare dirt here and there will help pollinators who dig nesting cavities.

Plants with hollow stems create a safe winter retreat for certain creatures who nest and lay eggs inside the stems.

Food comes as seed heads, late-season nectar, and fruit.

A diversity of plants that provide these different types of food will serve a greater number of species. Fall-blooming plants provide a nutritious last meal for many species before they migrate or go dormant. Standing seed heads will become a dining table for many species throughout the cold winter months. Again, diversity of plants will provide a variety of nutrients so birds will have a varied diet. Fruit and berries are popular when ripe or dried and should not be omitted from a healthy design.

As I’ve mentioned before, you need a  variety of plants working together to create both visual and ecologically functional working garden.

By having 3 species in bloom at all times of the season, you provide a rich, nutritious diet to many different pollinators. Another guideline is to have 50 – 60% grasses, with the rest being plants, shrubs, and other layers. Grasses provide structure, background, and texture plus all-season shelter and winter food. You can use grasses to separate plantings, creating drifts of color between ribbons of texture. Create large groups of color with grasses and sedges softening and providing structure.