This year, I had arugula volunteer in my “native plant” area. The bees love it, so I left it. Generally in my backyard, the soil is too rich for desert natives to want to thrive (next to raspberries or rhubarb). The invasive weeds are out of control in parts of my “vegetable garden” area due to regular irrigation and neglect on my part. The front yard has mostly natives, but some non-native xeric plants are included like Hesperaloe parviflora and Cercocarpus ledifolius. Then there’s Lycium torreyi, which is a wonderful native plant with abundant flowers for digger bees and fruit for the birds and I, but it spreads so much that I might start fighting back to protect other plants.
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since you asked (in another thread)
First, I don’t have a ‘garden’ I have a yard. The yard has plant beds. Since moving to our very urban house (Minneapolis, MN, US) 40 years ago, we’ve converted the borders of the back yard to plantings. It’s a mix of native and cultivated. Since it is very shady, we rely heavily on hostas. We have a large paper birch that came with the house and one large pine that the kids brought home in a paper cup on Arbor Day (we’ve cut down two others from the same source when they got too big for the backyard.
There really isn’t enough sun for most natives - although we do have some in the back. But there’s one corner that gets enough sun that I’ve planted natives in. We’re trying to add some grasses and we’ve got a small clump of Little Blue Stem that’s doing pretty well. Pretty much, we plant it and it either grows or it doesn’t. We don’t over fuss with anything. We also have numerous bird feeders, a bird bath on a pedestal and a small saucer of water that sits on the ground.
The fall dead plant stems either remain in place over winter or are cut down and placed in the garden till spring. We have a huge pile of composting leaves under the pine and if the birch drops a branch, it goes in the garden for ‘looks’ until it rots in place. Our yard is not ‘pretty’, it’s wild.
“Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.” J.R.R.T
Our yard has a dishevelled dyad loveliness.
So, I will replace the word ‘garden’ for ‘yard’ as this suits our situation better.
- Do you monitor diversity in your yard? How often, how much time do you spend, and what have you found?
It depends but, in the summer, I can be out every day if only for 15 minutes or so, prowling for bugs mostly. I have been known to roll over rocks (we have lots that we’ve collected from Lake Superior) to see what’s under them. I also often check the porch light at night before going to bed. I have seen a marked decrease in porch light insects over the last 5 years.
What have I found? My iNat observations numbers (I have seen things not uploaded to iNat):
206 species of insects
57 species of birds
24 species of arachnids
9 species of mammals
asst pillbugs, millipedes, slugs, snails
I think 206 species of insects kind of speaks to my dedication to finding life in the yard.
For awhile, I wandered up and down the alley looking for insects and spiders. Minneapolis alleys are kind of ugly things. All concrete and aging garages with a mixture of weeds and cultivated forbs planted decades earlier. I wanted to indicate how many forms of life live in seemingly bare, concrete jungles. I think the neighbors saw me on their security cam and they all cut down all the weeds/plants. Sigh. So much for habitat.
- How do you spread the message? I have all this diversity in a suburban concrete jungle and I want to encourage friends, neighbors, and strangers to appreciate and promote diversity. I know not everyone will get excited over orbweavers and robber flies, but I think many people are receptive to pollinator habitat (Save the Monarchs!).
When we started this slow journey 40 years ago, I’m pretty sure everyone else was still either in a 20th Century mindset of what a city yard should look like - or they just didn’t care and only mowed it to keep from getting a citation. But Minneapolis is pretty progressive and lots of folks got on the native yard bandwagon. On my block, one by one, others joined in with rain gardens or bird feeders and chunks of lawn turned into gardens. I don’t think I can claim a lot of credit for that but I think maybe I can claim some by example. I am not a gregarious person but when I talk to neighbors, I tell them what I’m doing and I invite them to come by the small pollinator garden (in the front) if they wish to see what’s visiting. I’m not sure if any have taken me up on that invite.
I am closest to one next-door neighbor pair and we often chat back and forth over what’s happening in the yard - usually regarding birds. But I did send them an email when we spotted a shrew under their feeder and another to give them an ID on the small bees visiting their native plantings.
It’s not something I would do (introvert!) but if nature programs that serve youth, families or other cultural groups doesn’t exist in someone’s area, volunteer to lead one. I’ve seen many examples of kids uploading iNat obs from various city parks (surely under the tutelage of park staff/volunteers) and I try to identify as many of their obs as possible - even the cultivated ones! (folks, if we get too snobby about this, we’re going to turn off people at their first attempt to try out iNat). A local nature center is hosting an LGBTQ+ nature hike. Other groups lead birding or nature hikes for people of color.
I think it’s all small steps. Get people excited about being in nature - and then excited about different forms of life and habitats - and then excited about conservation - and then excited about creating even small spaces for wildlife.
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I live in the same city as @egordon88 . Our house is in a dense suburban area with small yards but we still get wildlife which seem to like the native shrubs in our front yard. I have two camera traps there and we’ve documented Gray Fox and Striped Skunk using the yard. Coyotes and raccoons have been seen nearby. Although I work as a wildlife biologist even I was surprised by the animals that rove thru our neighborhood at night.
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I’ve even seen gray fox walk by my window while working for home! Only seen skunks in my yard once, yet mule deer have left scat twice this fall.
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We have lots of shrubs and trees, so our garden has got shadier over the last 10 years. When we are out hiking I look for indigenous plants that thrive in the shade and added these 2.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/141185-Commelina-africana
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/596679-Knowltonia-vesicatoria
PS our walled suburban garden was visited by an otter
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/125922343
and a heron
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27861584
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Very cool!
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for the Tolkien quote.
What part of Minneapolis, if you don’t mind my asking? I got to know some parts of the city fairly well, and I really admired the diverse plantings that people managed to keep going in zones 4 and 5.
I love gardening. I make sure to plant only natives, and rip out invasives such as mugwort. Sometimes, as is the case with bull thistle and wild carrot, I then devour my enemies. I am planning to install a wildlife pond (see the link in my Forum profile) next spring. The biodiversity here is good, and I see many different species every year. I spread the message to any other gardeners I meet by telling them to plant native.
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South Minneapolis. I have, within a 5-20 minute drive from me, access to a half dozen lakes, a creek, the Minnesota River and the Mississippi River. (This isn’t counting the noted ‘Chain of Lakes’ which are further from me and too popular for me to spend much time at.)
I think we take it for granted but most of the property around these waterways are public. When we travel, we’re sometimes reminded that some cities have one park which is primarily playground equipment, ball fields, and picnic tables. If we stop for lunch in the park, I’m hard pressed to find much to observe. Not much wildlife.
And much of this public land around me is allowed to be ‘natural’ if not downright designated as a nature park or wildlife refuge.
A section near Lake Nokomis was converted to native plants especially to attract Monarchs and they host a Monarch festival every fall.
I’ve described my immediate area but we have another major river about 45 minutes away and many of the metro counties are doing a lot to maintain and recover native habitat. I feel really lucky to live here.
And as far as zonal plantings, the city doesn’t get quite as cold as outlying areas. But, we’ve gotten -20 F temps so it does get cold. That’s where native plants come in handy.
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There are a lot of natives that tolerate shade but they are primarily spring plants that will take advantage of light before the trees leaf out. We have a decent patch of Jack-in-the-pulpit, as well as wild ginger, columbines, bleeding hearts, and Jacob’s ladder. But by July, they’re not a significant factor and things would look pretty bare without the hostas (a MN staple) and other cultivars.
Except for some flowering annuals, the cultivars attract almost no insects - understandably so. But in the interest of balancing a native habitat with an attractive yard, we are content with a mix of native and non-natives.
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Our garden is also a combination of the commonorgarden from temperate horticulture, which we inherited. And the indigneous I add as gaps open up.
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I love reading through all these comments, from my hometown (albuquerque) and its projects to those elsewhere. I’m starting to put stuff together for my own garden and observations. I’ve been struggling with the bug pictures but otherwise really enjoying this whole learning project.
In one day I got almost 8 different types of grasshoppers, I had no idea!
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Sorry to be annoying, but does anyone know anything about a type of fungus that grows on rotten, damp wood?, is a lupotiacaeae
That sounds like a whole lot of fungi.
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Welcome to the forum.
That encompasses many fungi including one called “wet rot”.
Without knowing where you are or anything about what you’re looking at it’s a wide range of guesswork.
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Google search finds no results for this word.
There is such a family as Lopadiaceae, which contains only a single genus of lichen, Lopadium. Per Wikipedia, “Lopadium species typically colonize decaying plant matter, moss cushions, or bark in cool, humid environments.” If this is not what you mean, could you try to verify the spelling?
or Lepiotaceae some of which grow in wood chip mulch.
From June 2024 to end of 2025, I added another thousand moth sheet uploads to reach 3,152 moth sheet observations of 836+ invertebrate species.
I also noticed today that my yard list Diptera reached 240 species and Coleoptera 260 species, out of a total 1,700 insects!
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