Sustainable wildlife

Attended a lecture last week at the Tulsa Garden Center. Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, spoke on sustaining wildlife with native plants. WOW, the evening was very interesting, his talk, the people|gardeners who are into native planting, the plant people who brought native plants to sell and the plants themselves. It was a bit overwhelming - I am just starting out to plant wildflowers and plants native to this area of NE Oklahoma. The current area to be planted is about 1500 sq feet. Plans are to kill the grass in this upper area of our yard, layout out a winding gravel path, spread lots of wildflower seeds, scatter some nice rocks around, plant some native plants and then wait for the birds, bees and caterpillars to flock to our yard. It feels like lots of work ahead, but it will be worth it - not having to mow that 1500 sq feet of space, doing something helpful to nature, plus the hope of bringing a variety of birds and butterflies makes it all very exciting.

Here are the two plants I bought for our wildflower garden:  wild blue sage (smells quite sagey) and swamp milkweed (food for monarch butterflies). Hope lots and lots of monarchs find their way to our yard next year.