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Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 13:49
| I have noticed that as my garden has exponentially grown this year, and my pot ghetto as well, many creatures have taken up residence in the moist shade of my plants. I have an abundance of little green anoles that love my rose pots, and they often scurry for cover whenever I go out to water. I have also inadvertently created an ideal grass snake breeding ground, and we have seen at least five baby snakes in the past two weeks. Not to mention the bees, wasps, and butterflies are ecstatic to have new pollination plants, flitting from salvias to roses to tickweeds in a tizzy. We even had a pair of cardinals take up residence in the front beds! A large gecko colony also lives in the pots and damp parts of the rose beds, and the slugs come out every night to roam before returning to the shade of the roses. It is rewarding to garden without pesticides and chemicals, as an ecosystem seems to have been borne out of the newfound infrastructure of the roses. Does your garden harbor a thriving wildlife community? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Several of my larger roses have become favorite nesting areas for various birds. The huge Mermaid is a convenient safe house for the sparrows when a hawk flies over. The gophers seem to have gotten tired of having their mounds trampled in the pastures and have moved to the fence lines where the roses grow and the soil is soft. So far they are not eating the rose roots, but I nearly lost one rose when the dogs tried to unearth the little beasts and dug up a plant in the process. The gopher escaped unharmed - as usual. The wasps also like to build in the thorny protection of the roses; I wish they would live elsewhere! |
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- Posted by mendocino_rose z8 N CA. (My Page) on Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 18:17
| The bird, reptile, and amphibian population has increased dramatically here. I also see a profusion of pollinators. It makes me so happy to know that what makes me happy makes them happy too. |
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| When we moved into our present house the area around it consisted basically of five plots of grass which enchanted the bunnies but no one else. The grass is gone and roses and companion plants have taken their place. Suddenly we had a multitude of frogs, lizards, birds, bees, various unidentified night creatures that like to dig in the soil - and still plenty of bunnies, which however diminish during the year due to predation by coyotes, bobcats and three resident feral cats, until the new crop in spring begins the cycle again. We expanded the planting areas which encouraged even more animal life, especially since I provide constant water in various areas via bird baths and bowls that have to be constantly refilled since some of the birds think they're custom-made bathtubs. I don't use any toxins and if a rose doesn't do well after a few years it means it wasn't meant to be here. If it rusts like an old bucket from the get-go (Gruss an Aachen) its time here is very, very short. There really isn't any wild creature that isn't welcome here except gophers, and they really don't care whether I approve of them or not. Ingrid |
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- Posted by jaspermplants 9 az (My Page) on Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 20:13
| I live in the middle of suburbia but since I don't use any poisons I have many critters in my yard. I have a small pond in my backyard (which the birds think is their personal watering hole) and a birdbath in the front. Since I have water available, I have a very good bird population, including a bunch of hummingbirds. I also have bugs and lizards and other critters. I have to say, I'm glad I don't have any snakes (that I know of anyway!). I have 2 bird nests in my climbing roses, which I'm happy to see! |
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| Huge Blanc double de Coubert outside dining room window...nest of cardinals every spring. Tons of chipmunks to torture the dogs. And Ingrid, I also have the mysterious night stranger to dig in my pots! |
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| I find many bird nests from the previous spring in my roses at pruning time. Roses have provided good cover and protection for the native songbirds here, and in return I have zero tomato hornworms. Win-win! |
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- Posted by melissa_thefarm NItaly (My Page) on Sat, Oct 12, 13 at 2:28
| The snail and grasshopper damage in the garden was so extensive this year that I wondered if something had happened to our predators: we've seen toads, snakes, and hedgehogs close to the house. We live in the country in mixed farm- and woodland, in a part of the world that has been extensively cultivated and modified by human activity for some thousands of years. I don't know how the average air quality is right around our house, but our farmer neighbors are great air polluters (they burn their trash, including quantities of plastic) and so is the cement factory down in the valley, giving our town some of the most polluted air in the province, in an area, the Po Valley, that has some of the worst air pollution in Europe. How about other human activities? We've been cleaning up our predecessors' dump and burn pile for a decade now. The pollution, the steady logging for firewood, the intensive farming make me wonder just how much the animal (and plant) population has been affected here. There doesn't seem to be much variety, and there do seem to be a large proportion of those sorts of animals and plants that flourish in degraded environments: rats, crows. I have an impression of an ecology that's out of balance. That said, our garden in flowering time hums with bees, flies, wasps, hornets, butterflies. Way too many flower-eating beetles, always, and too many grasshoppers and snails this year; but ladybugs in abundance. I find some bird's nests, but not enough to make me happy. We have a healthy lizard population, too. With the progressive abandonment of our hills and mountains, a process that has gone on since WWII and one I have no reason to think will reverse itself any time soon, large wildlife, boars, roe deer, and now wolves are returning in force. However I don't know whether there has been much change in the populations of those plants and animals that require little-disturbed ecosystems to flourish. The European Union is interested in biodiversity, Italy as well; but the concept doesn't appear to have entered much into local thinking. Melissa |
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- Posted by jacqueline3 9CA (My Page) on Sat, Oct 12, 13 at 13:00
| We live 3 blocks from the downtown of a 50,000 pop town. Nonetheless, as soon as I stopped spraying (a disastrous one year experiment when I was very ignorant) the animals & bugs moved in in droves. Our old garden has lots of trees & huge bushes. Once I added bird baths, the bird population, both migrant and resident, exploded. I have a list of all of the different bird species I have identified just in our 1/3 acre lot - it is over 75 different ones by now, including hawks & a huge (over 40) flock of band-tailed pigeons, which are very large, and theoretically only live in forests (they probably account for the hawks). Deer, squirrels (2 kinds, which interestingly are inter-breeding), possums, skunks, wood rats (being discouraged), raccoons with babies, and even an occasional fox either live here full time or visit frequently. Lots of honey bees, several kinds of wasps, and at least 8-9 other kinds of bees of all sorts, as well as swallowtail butterflies, & lots of other moths & butterflies which are not quite as spectacular. And of course a huge population of lady bugs, as well as most probably lots of other critters I have missed. I must say it has amazed me how quickly and to what extent the wildlife take advantage of even a small green space oasis. We love it, and it enhances the garden amazingly. Jackie |
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- Posted by Kippy-the-Hippy 10 Sunset 24 (My Page) on Sat, Oct 12, 13 at 14:53
| I don't think it is so much the roses that attract as it is the water, mulch and companion plants that attract in our garden. While I have cut branches to stumps on fruit trees, removing the usual nesting zones, the birds have discovered those stumps are wonderful once the stump sprouts back. Little stick nests from the towhee and mocking birds. The towhees love all the mulch under the roses and spend their days rearranging it for us. The lavenders and salvias are full of bees and hummingbirds. I think my favorite are the very tall sunflowers plants that put out dozens of small flowers. Those first attract the bees, then when they dry out they are filled with the small birds, they chatter away and pick those tiny seeds all day. The neighbor gave us some seeds from the milkweed, so next year I hope to add some more monarch butterflies too |
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| My garden in the suburbs is no-spray and has a mix of roses, trees, other shrubs, perennials, etc. I've had birds nesting in larger roses such as Darlow's Enigma. My garden is home to a wide variety of wildlife including chipmunks, squirrels, snakes, birds, insects, raccoons, deer (though I try to fence them out), and rabbits. I think the cover and mixed planting attract a wide variety of critters! |
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