How to Plant a Wildlife Garden

Preparing the Site & Planting Your Plants

Site Preparation

There are two stages to Site Preparation: removing anything that's already growing there – for me that was lots of noxious weeds and a little grass – and then getting the earth ready to receive the new plants. 

Weed Removal 

As a perfectionist, this is where I wish I could turn back time and start over. That’s not because things didn’t turn out well. They did. But I could have done this differently and have made things easier for myself 

What would I do differently? 

First of all, I would have started almost a year sooner by solarizing the entire site. Now, that's in retrospect, of course. But solarizing is a fabulous tool for killing weeds AND weed seeds. And it makes a huge difference over time. I have used solarization in several places in our yard to great success. Does it mean you will never have weeds? Nope. Most weed seeds are airborne, so solarizing won't do anything about the new weeds coming in. BUT our property is infested with two perennial weeds: Field Bindweed and Canada Thistle. Both have deep roots and can regenerate over and over again from those roots. Solarizing would have done the job well. But I didn't know we were going to do this project in time.

So what did we do?

Because it was the wrong time of the year, and I didn't have time to solarize the yard, I turned to herbicides. With 1000 square feet to do, an established tree's roots in certain places, and a very established population of weeds, this was the best solution for me. I used RoundUp only in the places where we would be planting. It took one application following the manufacturer's instructions. And the job was done. I don't use herbicides lightly, and if you choose this route, you must follow the instructions to the letter. But it was effective for this massive project. 

I will say this, too: I was too careful in a few areas where there were exposed tree roots, and I'll be fighting the bindweed there forever. I should have been more aggressive in that area because bindweed is tenacious and can kill my other plants if I am not careful. That's the nature of bindweed. 

We waited three weeks after applying RoundUp before moving on to the next phase.

Preparation for Planting

This phase went beautifully, and I wouldn't change a thing. I wanted a layer of organic material to exclude light, and I wanted to add a little nutrition back into the soil as a soil test revealed very little organic material at all. Frankly, this is part of why nothing grew in this area.

We worked wedge by wedge — prepping the site then planting. This was to limit the compaction of the compost, and to make the site easier to access. The wedges were part of the planting plan, and using lumber to lay them out made it easy to move from section to section.

So here's what we did:

How to Plant

Planting nearly 1000 plants takes time and organization. I took Kelly D. Morris' class, New Naturalism, and we talked a lot about plant selection and organizing plants into communities. So I spent a LOT of time with spreadsheets thinking about the site, which plants would work well together, and how to make something look natural and beautiful and work well, too. That's a lot. But I came up with six groupings of plants which would be repeated across the 1000 square foot area. 

When the plants arrived, we spent an entire day organizing them into those groupings – first by species and then into groups. That was a day well spent. Had we not done this organization work, the planting work would have taken much longer. 

All told, it took three adults plus one middle schooler three full days to plant 1000 plants. I also had another middle schooler and his grown-up who came and assisted for an afternoon, too. So if you are going to tackle this all at once, get some friends to help! 

On my plan, I divided the site into wedge-shaped areas. We used pieces of lumber to mark out the wedges, and then planted – one wedge at a time. We also gave each person working a specific job:

• Runner: putting together the next two or three groups of plants to be planted; also taking the discarded plastic pots and putting them in the collection bin

• Hole Digger: using a planting auger and a driver, this person put in 50 holes at a time. This takes strength in both the hands and the upper body. 

• Planter: physically planted each plant, putting the pots into a trug to be taken away and sorted

Necessary equipment

These are the things which I found to be essential to this project:

Because of the size and nature of the site, we worked across the site left to right and from the top of each wedge to the bottom to minimize the amount of time we spent kneeling or standing on the muddy compost. 

Planting the Trees & Shrubs

Correctly planting trees ensures their success long-term. They should be planted correctly from the start, and I followed the current guidelines which call for a wide and shallow, bowl-shaped hole which better supports root-growth. For more about planting trees, use this guide. 

Mulch

I toyed with the idea of putting down wood chips once everything was planted. In the end I decided against it because I wanted to be able to scatter some seeds amongst the plants, and wood chips tend to keep seeds from germinating. 

Do I regret this decision? Sometimes. It would be nice to have fewer weeds, but once the densely-planted design grows in, the weed pressure should be significantly reduced. 

Recycling

When it was all done, we had a lot of waste to dispose of properly. The cardboard boxes in which the plants had been shipped were used as weedblocking underneath a path area. Other cardboard was recycled. I found a local native nursery who took the pots and plant trays. And I recycled the plant tags. Later I had a conversation with High Country Gardens about starting a mail-back program for some or all of these materials. Maybe that will happen in the future. But the gardening industry generates a lot of plastic waste — finding a good reuse for those materials is always the best solution.

Reflection

While the installation of the Wildlife Garden was a huge project, it has been incredibly fruitful! I'm so proud of how it looks, and I'm delighted every time I see birds and butterflies and other creatures discovering our yard as a sanctuary for them. This project continues to evolve – we have a water feature to install, and so much more, so I hope you'll subscribe both here and on my YouTube channel as well as on Instagram where there will be updates and more as the garden grows. 

And, as always, reach out if you have questions!