Food for my human family or food for my wildlife friends? For years I grew both, but now I focus most of my gardening energy on helping other creatures get the sustenance and nesting grounds they need. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. Unlike us, birds and bees and frogs can’t just hop in the car and head to the grocery store. They can’t lobby for an end to habitat destruction. And most critically, they can’t restore what’s already been lost.
While it’s possible to do both types of gardening humanely and well, my overriding passion for animals meant that, as a vegetable gardener, I was a mess. To me, tomato hornworms chewing up the harvest were not pests; they were hummingbird moths in the making. Queen Anne’s lace taking over the dill bed may have been a nonnative weed, but the bees were certainly enjoying it.
Though an editor of words by trade, I couldn’t follow all the traditional horticultural advice to “edit” my landscape unless my life depended on it. And that’s largely because I was hyper-aware that sometimes others’ lives depended on my willingness to let nature take its course. So plot by plot, I let the carefully divided beds go to seed—literally. If the sassafras trees that fed spicebush swallowtail caterpillars and provided songbird habitat started to grove into the tomato bed, more power to them. If the volunteer evening primrose took over the herb garden, much to the carpenter bees’ delight, who was I to stop it?
The animals on my property have responded in kind, spreading the seeds of native plants throughout the gardens and introducing me to a different way of looking at harvest time. Though I used to work hard for my tomatoes and peppers, I was not nearly so creative or industrious as these backyard friends who’ve visited over the past week.
The Nectar Robber
Planted by birds years ago near my patio, our patch of night-blooming evening primrose is especially tasty to moths. Last Sunday, this little guy couldn’t resist it either. But when it became clear that the flowers weren’t the right shape for his own anatomy, he did what any self-respecting carpenter bee would do, climbing down the stem and drilling into it. This, it turns out, is a much-studied behavior called floral larceny, which occurs when insects steal nectar from a plant without pollinating it.
The Contortionist
Goldfinches descend on our echinacea seedheads every August, performing acrobatic feats worthy of the Cirque de Soleil. They work quickly and efficiently, paying it forward by dropping their leftovers all over the property and guaranteeing more food for even more animals in the coming seasons.
The Border Patrol
Rather than hang hummingbird feeders, we rely on a proliferation of native plants and a few potted nonnatives to sustain hummers throughout the season. This year’s smash hits with our tiny foodie friends were lavender wild bergamot, orange zinnias, and a red bee balm patch that’s now gone to seed. So taken with these plants were our little hummers that the feistier species—the rufous hummingbirds—chased away much larger songbirds who dared to come near their territories. The coloring of this week’s visitor indicates that she is likely a young or female ruby-throated hummingbird. (Thanks to my husband, Will Heinz, for capturing the zinnia series shown in the photo above and in this blog’s featured image at the top.)
The Opportunist
While many insects are specialists, meaning they’ll eat only certain plant species, bumblebees and others dine on a wide variety. Less than 24 hours after I’d added these Rudbeckia nitida to the garden, the pollinators showed up in full regalia.
The Lawn Mower
A bit like the opportunists, our rabbit friends have an uncanny ability to find a smorgasbord around every corner. While they do occasionally eat the buds right off our prize plants, they are just as content to dine on the weedy grasslands. And we are equally happy to invite them to the table.
