Wildlife in the Garden

The physical act of gardening otherwise known as agriculture and horticulture are almost contradictory practices. You as gardener are god in a way. You decide what is going to live and what is going to die in order for you to realize the landscape vision in your mind.

One philosophy, what I refer to as “old school or tame the land method” is essentially kill everything in sight that does not belong there. First, kill everything in sight. This includes animals, weeds, old plants, unwanted grass, everything. Second, plant your desired plants. Third, maintain this cruel land with an iron fist, loaded gun, traps, poison you name it. Sounds cruel to 85% of you folks out there in the gardening world I am sure. It is old school, most of the folks that practiced those methods are now at the big garden in the sky. Now that the old schoolers are vanishing we are strangely enough trying to bring back some of the wildlife they eradicated in their quest to tame the land.

Therefore, the second approach I would like to talk about is the live and let most things live approach. I say most things because rabbits have been so destructive around here over the years. They massacred thousands of dollars of crab trees, chewed up loads of irrigation hoses, and chewed oodles of baby shrubs down to nothing over and over again. When this stuff happens you start feeling a little old school, especially when you are paying the mortgage on thirty acres they can do what they want on without fear of retaliation from me. On the ten acres that is nursery it depends on how destructive they are what approach we take. We have to be able to pay that mortgage or else the old schoolers may come back. Then the rabbits would really be in trouble. Thank goodness we have had a pretty good group of rabbits the past few years.

You may have a problem critter in your garden. I have heard horror stories of chipmunks, squirrels, coons, opossum, deer, dogs, cats etc over the years. The thing I would encourage you to do would be to think very carefully of how you might get rid of these animals in a humane way. Think about live traps in particular. If you do live trap something make sure you liberate your animal friend near a water source. The animal is not going to know where it is. It is going to need an obvious water source while it is regrouping, figuring out its next move.

If your problem is a large animal like a deer. There are lots of deer resistant repellants, books on deer proofing the garden, internet sources on dealing with deer in the landscape. I personally use fabric softener sheets and disco ball Christmas ornaments the size of tennis balls to deter deer. The fabric softener sheets smell like human beings. During hunting season in the fall they are very effective. The disco balls cause reflections in the sunlight that can be seen from a half mile away on a sunny day.

The third approach to gardening is what we call new school. It is the method where we plant things to actually bring wildlife into the garden. Plants we might plant for these purposes would be Serviceberry trees, Viburnum bushes, Butterfly bushes, Coneflowers, Fuscia baskets, and Paw Paw. The list goes on its just a matter of what kind of wildlife you are trying to attract.

To have a really healthy garden I think it is almost imperative to plant things that benefit other life forms in the ecosystem. People often think “the environment” is not part of their yard. Their yard is almost an extra room of the house. This idea is being pushed in the greater industry right now with the “outdoor living space” thing. Do not get me wrong it’s a cool concept. However, if we are going to ever get some kind of balance between the natural environment and human culture we are going to have to learn how to live with wildlife peacefully to some degree.

If you think you need to be god be careful what you kill, you may just screw up your gardening karma. This especially goes for killing snakes and spiders. Although these animals have a certain creep factor to them they are some of the most beneficial when it comes to ridding the environment of heinous pest such as mosquitoes and mice.