Hi everyone! 🌿
To me, gardening is more than just growing flowers—it’s about connecting to nature and creating a space where wildlife can thrive. Cottage gardens are perfect for this! In this video, I’ll share simple, practical tips on how to attract wildlife to your garden—bees, butterflies, birds, and more—while keeping your space beautiful and intentional.
Watch as I design a wildlife-friendly garden in real-time and show how easy it is to support local ecosystems right in your own backyard. A wildlife garden doesn’t have to be wild and overgrown—it can be a harmonious, stunning sanctuary for both humans and creatures alike. 🐛🦋
If you love sustainable gardening, pollinator-friendly plants, or creating eco-conscious outdoor spaces, this one’s for you.
🌸 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe—it really supports the channel and helps us grow our little gardening community. I’ve just stepped back into the garden after a long winter, so stay tuned for lots of spring gardening content coming soon!
✨ Tell me in the comments—what wildlife do you love seeing in your garden?
With love and muddy hands,
Anna & Burt
33 Comments
Ive been working on this too! I call it micro-envieoments. I want butterflies and hummingbirds and dragonflies 😊
Hello, Anna. I love your videos. I am from Poland.❤❤❤
I figure on having wildlife eat from my garden so I plant extra in the front yard so they can go there and munch and stay out of the main garden in the backyard. I’m also working on a snake habitat to keep the moles away. Whole lot of flowers this year so I hope it’s a good summer. Cheers
You have my dream , woodland garden. But, I live in So Cal and it gets really hot here, I have almost full sun, but I love a shade garden. Its a new move after 52 years, so I have big challenges adapting to this new environment. Plus my little grandson is allergic to bees!!! So color and flowers are an issue. One question I have is… is there a sun loving ground cover that does not attract bees?
I love your doing sooo much!😊
I love you 💖
I love when i see the bees,bumblebees and butterflies in the garden. It feels like i have done the right thing for them and makes me happy😃
Living The Dream
For a digestible synthesis of all the research, folks can check out the books of Doug Tallamy. The most important part is that the plants be native.
Hi Anna! I love your enthusiasm and your love of gardening as well as our awareness of our little critters who very much benefit from gardens of all type. I know that this is such a value to me when gardening. Nature IS OUR HOME and we have a responsibility to keep that in mind. I live on Cape Cod as your neighbor and have a cottage garden myself and very much enjoy watching your channel as well as derive great information from your design savvy. You’re a wonderful educator and I enjoy your channel.🥰
Very special! No matter the size, anything we can do to benefit our native pollinators and birds the better ❤
I’ve told people for years that side yards, even the narrow spaces between houses, can be used to create an awesome environment for lil critters and pollinators!
I loved this video. Please, more content like this!!!! ❤❤❤
Wood and mos is also a good landing space in water dor insects, because the can even drink from the capillary action in the damp wood and moss
Love the designing series. There's so much room to play with in this idea and you do such a fabulous job building an inviting gardenscape. I can't wait for the day you do an episode on butterfly host plants. Joe pye weed is a host to swallow tails, skippers, and painted ladies. Supporting caterpillars is critical for us to have butterflies. Also your line about chewed leaves being "embroidery on the leaves" was beautiful 💙
🇦🇺 If you live in NSW Australia there’s an INCREDIBLE app called ‘Trees Near Me’ made by the NSW Government which will give you a crazy thorough map of all your local native plant species. Highly recommended
wowo❤❤❤❤
Some garden centres have a special section about native plants, bugs and wildlife and sometimes give away seeds or tubers with a purchase.
What is the software that you are using?
Thank you for stressing the importance of sharing the nature. It is so important. Beautiful video!
Hello Anna
What state/zone are you in
If you are lucky enough to have a resident opossum – they will eat all of your slugs, so don't use the bait!!
We let our yard grow dandelions and clovers. Our neighbors yards are impeccable, no weeds. So we get all the little bees and butterflies. We started with our butterfly bush. Now I want to enlarge and take better care of our pollinators ❤ thank you for your video.
Gardens are the best when they are in tune with nature!
Please be aware that birdbaths need to be cleaned daily and deep cleaned at least once a week on hot days also daily to keep the birds happy and healthy.
If you find dead birds you immediately need to put the bird bath away at least for 3 weeks and clean it really well before using it again.
How nice, thank you so much for the video. I have a romantic woodland/wildlife garden. <3 Your garden is a huge inspiration for me <3
Pollinators love my Valerian and also my spiked Veronica, they're always buzzing around them !
Excellent 😃🎉
I subscribed to your channel 🙏🏼
Highly recommend checking out Doug Tallamy’s books and his Homegrown National Park movement. He recommends having 70% natives in our gardens, especially keystone native species that support the most wildlife.
I love the tips for a cottage garden, please check out my latest video where I am creating a cottage garden area in memory of my Dad. https://youtu.be/4RBztUcjjQo?si=fc5FPtooWafnrY13
Thank you for the inspiring videos. We have a similar forested property in WNC with a lot of downed limbs/trees from Helene and a brutal winter. It's been hard to get inspired but your ideas and the birds returning to our woodland area has pulled me back outside!
Seeing these videos gives me hope for humanity 😊