7 hours ago
How to Avoid Even the Unintended Results of Your Ecological Mistakes
Like many other gardeners, Sarah F. Jayne felt inspired by the writings of the entomologist and wildlife ecologist Douglas W. Tallamy to create a more biodiverse, habitat-style landscape — to garden with the intention of sharing her property with nature.
But as she worked to increase the native-plant quotient in her garden in Oxford, Pa., by removing invasives, and taking other key steps, she realized that despite decades of gardening experience, she kept coming up short. The finer points of everything from plant choices to the tactical how-to's of creating and caring for this very different style of garden eluded her.
Ms. Jayne, whose background is in agriculture and education, came to one especially tricky realization about another shortfall in her grasp of how things work. Her efforts at welcoming wildlife sometimes risked negative unintended consequences.
If more birds were enjoying the garden's enhanced offerings, that increased the chances of often-fatal window strikes that are estimated to kill more than a billion birds in the United States each year. Artificial light at night confused insects and caused harm. A bucket left out that caught some rain became a trap some creature could drown in. How and when she mowed represented a big potential danger to animals including frogs, toads and snakes.
'We have a duty, I think, to protect those creatures that we invite to our property,' Ms. Jayne said. 'The wildlife was one of my main motivations for planting, and yet I was unaware of some of the ecological traps that I was setting up for them.'
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