Transforming A Lawn Into A Wildlife Haven
At A Glance
Transforming An Ordinary Lawn
Long Island, NY
Issue: This client’s lawn wasn’t getting any use and certainly wasn’t giving back to the environment.
Solution: Spadefoot transformed this ordinary lawn into a wildlife haven, which benefitted both the client and the environment.
The Project Details
From an ecological standpoint, lawn might as well be concrete. It provides little cover for native wildlife species, absorbs relatively little stormwater, and requires supplemental irrigation to maintain. Often, it is also a source of runoff of fertilizer and other chemicals. Of course some functional lawn area is appropriate for allowing kiddos to run and play, but if the only time you walk on that patch of lawn is to mow it—it probably doesn’t need to be lawn!
As such we provided a wildlife haven out of a former unused lawn area.
Here are the types of plants added:
- Andropogon gerardii-Big Blue Stem
- Panicum virgatum-Switchgrass
- Sorghastrum nutans-Indian Grass
- Eragrostis spectabilis-Purple Love Gras
- Eupatorium hyssopifolium-Hyssop Leaved Thoroughwort
- Baptisia tinctoria-Wild Indigo
- Asclepias tberosa-Butterfly Weed
- Solidago odora-Sweet Goldenrod
- Monarda didyma-Scarlet Bee Balm
- Coreopsis verticillata-Tickseed
- Clethra alnifolia-Summersweet (for a wet spot in the backyard)
- Asclepias incarnata-Swamp Milkweed (for a wet spot in the backyard)
- Lobelia siphilitica-Great Blue Lobelia (for a wet spot in the backyard).
- Echineacea purpurea-Purple Coneflower
- Rudbeckia triloba-Brown Eyed Susan
