Colorado Wildscapes: Bringing Conservation Home, from Audubon Colorado
About eight years ago, not long after my Rocky Mountain Garden Survival Guide was published, I got a call from a board member of Audubon Colorado, the state chapter of The National Audubon Society. She was spearheading an effort to produce a book about “wildscaping,” landscaping for wildlife. She had hired a writer, but wasn’t happy with the resultant manuscript–it needed more how-to for homeowners, she said, more examples of successful projects, and more focus on yards as wildlife habitat, especially for birds. She had seen my new garden book and knew I wrote for Audubon Magazine. Would I look over the manuscript and give her suggestions?
I sighed inwardly, guessing that the money for writing the book had already been spent, and that she was hoping I would rescue it gratis. That assumption proved true, but the project–an effort to show people how restore nature in our yards and neighborhoods–was close to my heart, so I said “Yes.” I even enrolled my mother, a retired librarian with a passion for plants and natural history, in helping me with the research, fact-checking, and indexing.
The heart-time I put into that book, Colorado Wildscapes: Bringing Conservation Home, resulted in my working with the funder on several (paid) urban wildlife restoration projects, including developing a wildscape at a gritty urban power plant, and over time, we became close friends, a relationship worth far more than any billable hours.
This wildscape restores wildlife habitat to a steep slope between the plant offices and the coal-fired power plant at Cherokee Power Plant in industrial northeast Denver.
Recently, my wildscape-promoting friend returned to Colorado after living away, and purchased a lot in a subdivision developed by Colorado’s largest green builder, McStain Neighborhoods. When she met with McStain, reknowned for their early adoption of New Urbanism (houses with front porches, shared green spaces, and pedestrian- and bike-friendly neighborhoods) and energy-efficient, green designs, she was shocked to realize they required a portion of each yard be landscaped with turfgrass lawn.
So she called and asked for advice. I had been wondering what I could get her for a housewarming present. The answer was obvious: I could draw her landscape concept plan. One that featured her passion for birds and wildlife habitat in urban places, and did not include any lawn, but would “wow” the McStain people.
I visited her new lot on the high plains east of Boulder. The soil was clay; the original shortgrass grassland that nurtured bison and prairie dogs, horned larks and mountain plover, was long gone, succeeded by imported pasture grasses and now, the lawns and shade trees of suburbia.
The scraped lot, its clay soil a testament to the original high plans shortgrass prairie, now surrounded by non-native pasture and suburban landscaping.
As we walked her corner lot, looking at the stakes that outlined her 2,000+ square-foot Craftsman bungalow-style house, she turned to me and said, “What was I thinking? This lot is huge!”
I reassured her that we’d turn it into an easy-care, wildlife friendly landscape that would delight her, wouldn’t cost a fortune, and would be a showplace for her wildscape concept.
The first step was a plant list. Since she knew what plants she liked, and had Colorado Wildscapes to draw on, I asked her to write up her thoughts, and I’d refine them and come up with a plan for which species would be happy where, and a concept that would turn her huge scraped lot into a series of intimate spaces filled with native flowers in season and birds year-round, with emphasis on her favorites, hummingbirds. And of course, it would be water-thrifty and low maintenance.
Then I went home and lost a night’s sleep wondering what I had gotten myself into….
Plants like this Missouri evening primrose thrive even in high plains clay and summer heat.
Once I had her plant list, and had refined it, paring the species that would not love her clay soils and hot summers, the species that required too much fussing, and adding some she hadn’t thought of that would give winter color and food for her beloved birds, I spent a few evenings staring at the lot plan and thinking.
I began to see a patio in the front yard, screened by waving clumps of native grasses and a flowering crabapple tree, where she could enjoy coffee in the morning sun. Between her house and the one next door, a boulder-filled dry stream channel that would carry water away from the sloping backyard and would provide her a colorful thread of riparian shrubs to provide screening from that too-close neighboring house, and more bird habitat.
A shortgrass prairie “unlawn” with native wildflowers–easy care, water-thrifty, great wildlife habitat.
On the expansive south side of the house, a shortgrass prairie “unlawn” filled with native wildflowers, with a path meandering through it, connecting the patio in front with the backyard, and beyond that prairie, an undulating wild “hedge” of water-thrifty, mixed native shrub species that would give her some privacy from the side street, as well as provide still more bird food and habitat. In the backyard, the engineering plan dictated a storm-water retention basin which could become a swale, feeding the dry stream bed along the side of the house. It could also water a mountain-ash tree just off her kitchen, providing berries to attract birds in winter. A border of hummingbird-attracting wildflowers next to her porch; more shortgrass prairie unlawn beyond a vegetable garden and a labyrinth, and a clump of spruce and piñon pines in the far corner to give her a bit of mountain habitat….
The concept plan: the street is at the bottom of the page.
Once I had the images in my mind, I spent a weekend refining the pencil-sketch concept, and then sent it off in the mail. The other day I got an ecstatic email from my friend: “Thanks to you and your plan, McStain’s landscaper embraced the design and I will have the first house in the development without SOD!!!”
Wildscape: 1; Lawn: 0. That’s the score I was hoping for.
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About Susan J. Tweit
It’s so thrilling to me when I see examples of normally rigid HOAs who are adopting more earth-friendly thinking about lawns. Your plan looks wonderful. I can’t wait to see what it looks like after it’s planted. Thanks for helping to educate this community about the beauty and benefits to wildlife of wildscaping!
Carole Sevilla Brown recently posted..The 5 Pillars of Ecosystem Gardening
Carole, I found this particular challenge fascinating because the developer, whose rules are the issue here, not an HOA, prides themselves on green building and on creating a sense of community in each neighborhood, yet up until now required each yard to include lawn. In a drought. In Colorado where to sustain a lawn means watering all summer. So I was especially delighted to open their eyes with this design….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Road Report: A taste of Alaska!
What an inspiration this is, Susan! I loved your description of process: so often, we see just the end result of a project. Knowing the backstory (the whys, wherefores, why-nots) helps us to understand how it came to be what it is. We know it will be reshaped in the planting, so do continue the story for us!
Susan Wittig Albert recently posted..Works-in-progress: August
Thanks, Susan A! As you can imagine, I enjoy the process as much as the end product, especially when it’s a collaboration with the homeowner as this concept was. Showing the process–even summarized in a blog post–is almost as much fun as the actual process, because I do love to teach. I also enjoy the evolution of a design from paper to actual ground, so it’ll be fun to watch what happens with this one. I will see the project in a couple of weeks when I’m down on the Front Range next, and am hoping that some of the hardscape (patio, paths, boulder stream channel and such) will be installed by then. If so, I’ll shoot some photos and write about how things are coming along.
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Road Report: A taste of Alaska!
wonderful! I’ve always been a bit confuddled by They Say We MUST Have a Lawn. It’s going to be a fascinating garden to wander thru with ‘river’ and ‘mountain’ and ‘prairie’. Love to see that garden grow blog post by blog post. (and glad to read you here as your own blog has gone silent on me)
Diana of Elephant’s Eye recently posted..Lughnasa flowers for Annie
Diana, I think it will be a fascinating garden, and I know the owner is going to be very involved in the planting, so she’ll know it from the ground up as it were, always best for a native plant-based community. That way she’ll get to watch the relationships develop as she tends it, and sees her beloved birds return to enjoy it! I’m sorry that my blog has gone silent for you. Could the address somehow have gotten muddled? Try this link: http://susanjtweit.com
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Road Report: A taste of Alaska!
thanks, now I have you back in my Reader where you belong.
Diana of Elephant’s Eye recently posted..Lughnasa flowers for Annie
Susan this is fabulous. I hope we can persuade more developers and lawmakers that sod is not the answer.
Donna@Gardens Eye View recently posted..Dog Days of Summer Harvest
Hear, hear! I’m completely with you there, Donna. Turfgrass lawns are biological deserts, and worse yet, they are outright poisonous with the continual applications of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Why we consider them “beautiful” I do not understand. (Guess I’m not in the mainstream there!)
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Road Report: A taste of Alaska!
A great outcome and a great story of how it came to be. What a win for everyone, especially the environment!
Ellen Honeycutt recently posted..Everyday Nature
I’m pretty tickled, as you can imagine, Ellen. I don’t do many garden or landscape designs these days as most of my time goes to managing my health, writing, and doing my best to keep up with my own yard and the park next door that I maintain. But it’s a treat to be part of changing the world one yard at a time….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Road Report: A taste of Alaska!
Fantastic! What great work, Susan!
UrsulaV recently posted..Found On Water Barrel
Thanks, Ursula! I hear from my friend that the hardscape part of the design is coming along, so I’m looking forward to see the concept taking shape when I visit her place-in-progress in a couple of weeks. I’ll report back….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Loss, grief–and back to paying the bills
I have a bit of a compromise going on in my property. Neighbors in this area objected strenuously – think weed eaters through a large swath of a native flower planting in full bloom – to my not having a grassed lawn in front of my home. My property backs up to a nature preserve and is mostly wooded, plus I wanted to be certified as a wildlife habitat. The compromise is a small lawn area – approximately 2000 square feet with obvious edges. Beyond these edges are native open plantings and woodland plantings. Once they could see what I was attempting, the neighbor’s objections ended. Now the only damage to plantings is caused by the four footed neighbors and those we really don’t mind.
Alison Pockat recently posted..The Right Variety for the Place
I think someone taking a weed-eater to my yard would cause me to call the police! I’m glad you had the patience to work with your neighbors and to find a compromise that works for you all. And perhaps that 2,000 square-foot lawn can shrink over time as the open plantings and woodland plantings grow larger (keeping those obvious edges, for those who prefer a formal aesthetic).