Our habitat garden for people and wildlife

Our yard is more than just a place to sit and relax, more than just a garden.

It’s a living landscape: a habitat where birds, butterflies, bees, toads, and other little creatures can find food, water, cover, and a place to raise their young. A place where there are no pesticides or herbicides that would harm these creatures or people.

It’s a place that’s full of life — a very exciting place to be!

It’s the kind of place you, too, can have in your own yard, whether you have a small urban space, a medium-size suburban lot (such as ours), or acreage in the country.

We hope the experiences and information we share in this website help you create your own habitat garden and will inspire you to become a good steward of your own piece of the earth, helping preserve a healthy planet for future generations — both human and non-human.

Entrance to back yard

“Caring for Our Piece of the Earth” course

FREE Caring course

In addition to this website, I’ve created a FREE 6-session discussion course called “Caring for Our Piece of the Earth.” It’s available as PDF files on the Habitat Gardening in Central New York Wild Ones chapter website.

It’s designed for groups of 8-12 people, but individuals are welcome to use it, too.

But it’s more fun in a group! Why not get a group together and meet at a local library, in a community group, in your home — or even as an online group?

Certifications

Join us in creating a healthier planet!


Reflections

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
~ Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

To me the choice is clear. The costs of increasing the percentage and biomass of natives in our suburban landscapes are small, and the benefits are immense. Increasing the percentage of natives in suburbia is a grassroots solution to the extinction crisis …
   Our success is up to each one of us individually. We can each make a measurable difference almost immediately by planting a native nearby.
   As gardeners and stewards of our land, we have never been so empowered — and the ecological stakes have never been so high.
~ Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, pp. 286-287

[T]he rule of no realm is mine … But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task … if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair and bear fruit and flower again in days to come … For I also am a steward.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, as spoken by Gandalf in The Return of the King