Audubon At Home

Reduce Pesticides

Increase Backyard Biodiversity

Rethink your lawn

Learn How to Garden for birds and other Wildlife

Welcome Birds and Butterflies…
and Toads and Dragonflies…
and …

A healthy yard teems with life. It is home not only to vibrant plants and colorful birds and graceful butterflies, but also to crawling insects, writhing worms, and untold numbers of beneficial bacteria. AND THIS IS GOOD, VERY GOOD!

A healthy ecosystem is comprised of diverse species carrying out many different functions … eating pests, recycling wastes, pollinating plants. Coral reefs and tropical rain forests are renowned for their biodiversity or diversity of species, but you need look no farther than your backyard, however, for an impressive example of a biodiverse ecosystem. And as with coral reefs and tropical rain forests, it is important to preserve, protect, and enhance the diversity of species in our backyard ecosystems.

How can we nurture a healthy backyard ecosystem? How can we enhance our backyard biodiversity?

• Simply put, to support a diversity of species we must provide a diversity of places for them to live and a diversity of resources for them to use. Different species require different foods, different habitats, different amounts of space and privacy.
  
• Variety is the key. Provide different food sources. Create different types of habitat. Plant a diversity of plants.
  
• Mimic natural communities in WHAT you plant and HOW you plant. Plant native plants. Create structural diversity -- group plants in clusters and form overlapping layers.
  
• Consider your yard a part of a larger ecosystem. Wildlife doesn’t recognize property lines. Many animals require more space than is found in a single backyard, and most are very mobile. How can you complement and enhance neighboring habitat?