This spring, we grew bunnies in our garden! Though its leaves are said to be toxic to mammals, golden ragwort (Packera aurea) provides wonderful cover for nesting animals.
Last year, a friend emailed to say she thought my proposed title for an upcoming presentation—”Creating a Wildlife Garden”—was a little silly. “If a vegetable garden grows vegetables, then a wildlife garden grows wildlife,” she wrote. “It sounds like you’re planting the seeds of baby rabbits!”
She was a marketing director with expertise in areas I hadn’t even thought about, so I certainly wasn’t going to question her. Besides, she had an interesting point.
In some sense, though, we do “grow” animals when we garden for wildlife. By adding plants and other habitat elements where they can eat, take shelter and raise their young, we are nurturing entire life cycles of species who may otherwise have nowhere else to go in the surrounding grass-dominated landscapes of suburbia. It’s just sometimes hard to see them. More often than not, my camera picks up on treasures I’ve failed to notice with my own eyes, serving up wonderful surprises in magnified images on my computer screen.
Often it feels like a game of hide-and-seek, adding to the joy of discovery in my own backyard. “Peekaboo!” I like to whisper when I do catch them diving into the flowers and taking cover under the brush. “I see you!” But mostly I keep my distance, grateful for a camera that allows me to watch them without disturbance. As these photos show, simply observing native plants provides a wonderful glimpse into the quiet worlds of animals who make their homes among the leaves and flowers.
Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) obscures this silver-spotted skipper, one of many visitors to the nectar-rich plant.A tiny metallic bee exits the all-you-can-eat buffet of a turtlehead (Chelone lyonii).An earwig becomes much more intimate with this coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) than my zoom lens ever could.A bee commandeers the Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), an important nectar source early in the season.A female Eastern tiger swallowtail isn’t exactly hidden by this New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis). But a closer look finds someone much smaller–a skipper–sharing the flowers beneath her.A male Eastern tiger swallowtail has better luck being a wallflower behind the giant bloom of Hibiscus ‘Lord Baltimore,’ a hybrid of native hibiscus species.Katydids are hard to distinguish from the leaves of common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis).A northern pearly eye spends a long time extracting something (minerals? rain drops?) from the screws of the garage door opener before traveling to the keyhole to find more treats.A hummingbird moth samples the menu in a pot of verbena on my deck. (Once I realized why this nonnative is so attractive to pollinators with long proboscises–because of its accessible corolla–I planted more varieties of native phlox that would bloom throughout the season in the garden.)A slug is more than welcome to show up on the swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Sure, he’ll ooze a little, but who am I to judge? Our species leaves much slimier, less natural, and more harmful substances in our wake all over the planet.Young bluebirds try to stay invisible until their hungry bellies get the best of them.A monarch butterfly enjoys basking for a while on a sassafras leaf and doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get to the milkweed. Perhaps he has just hatched and needs to dry his wings–or maybe he’s as curious about me as I am about him.
8 thoughts on “Peekaboo! Who’s Hiding in the Plants?”
Nancy, wonderful set of pictures and post regarding the critter-use of our “wildlife” gardens. I too have hosted several nests of bunnies over the past 3 or 4 years, sometimes 2 in one year. My husband finds it hilarious that as the bunnies eat the liatris and other edible treats, I add more. It can be quite the balancing act, but that is what nature is all about, right?
Hi Cori, thank you! Exactly – we all need to eat, right? I didn’t know the bunnies ate liatris; maybe that’s why I have a hard time getting them to reseed. It makes sense because those new shoots look so tender and delicous. 🙂
I am trying hard to take a ‘zen’ approach to wildlife (i.e. rabbits) in my nascent native garden/hedgerow. The family of rabbits love tasting all the new understory shrubs/trees I add to my native hedgerow. I am solving this problem by using tree guards around all new plantings. This seems to help.
Hi Alex, what kind do you use? I need to get some, too — at my place there’s a little chowing down, but it’s more rubbing and nibbling at the base of new things that’s the problem. I’ve been looking at tree guards and just want to make sure not to get the kind with small holes that can snare snakes and little critters. Also I’ve never used them and wasn’t sure if some work better than others?
Nancy, wonderful set of pictures and post regarding the critter-use of our “wildlife” gardens. I too have hosted several nests of bunnies over the past 3 or 4 years, sometimes 2 in one year. My husband finds it hilarious that as the bunnies eat the liatris and other edible treats, I add more. It can be quite the balancing act, but that is what nature is all about, right?
Hi Cori, thank you! Exactly – we all need to eat, right? I didn’t know the bunnies ate liatris; maybe that’s why I have a hard time getting them to reseed. It makes sense because those new shoots look so tender and delicous. 🙂
I love when my camera picks up critters I’ve overlooked! Gorgeous post!
Thanks, Melanie! Yes, I wouldn’t see half the things I see without my camera. I feel so lucky to have a window into their worlds. 🙂
I love your photos in this blog! Good eyes there, Nancy. Great commentary, too.
Thanks, Melinda! 🙂
I am trying hard to take a ‘zen’ approach to wildlife (i.e. rabbits) in my nascent native garden/hedgerow. The family of rabbits love tasting all the new understory shrubs/trees I add to my native hedgerow. I am solving this problem by using tree guards around all new plantings. This seems to help.
Hi Alex, what kind do you use? I need to get some, too — at my place there’s a little chowing down, but it’s more rubbing and nibbling at the base of new things that’s the problem. I’ve been looking at tree guards and just want to make sure not to get the kind with small holes that can snare snakes and little critters. Also I’ve never used them and wasn’t sure if some work better than others?