An engaging and informative presentation on the ways we can create crucial habitat resources for wildlife to survive winter in urban and suburban landscapes. Topics include ecological processes, suburban applications, creating spaces for toads and amphibians to hibernate, insect life-cycles, winter birds, providing food resources, and hydration stations. Ideas and processes are contextualized as they historically occurred in the landscape with clear applications to garden design and simple projects. This presentation covers many ideas presented in Dr. McCoshum’s book “Inviting Pollinators and Other Wildlife Into Your Garden” available on Amazon.
Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y9G1RY2
Other books mentioned in the presentation include Audubon BIRDHOUSE BOOK and “Attracting Wildlife To Your Backyard” by Josh VanBrakle.
Check out more amazing videos by the host @wildonesbaltimore
This is um Wild Ones greater Baltimore my name is Amanda Ray and um we are doing a talk on winter habitat with Dr sha mcashan and today’s talk is about creating robust winter habitat with hibernacula I hope I’ve said that right shelters food and water um so this is going to be an
Engaging and informative presentation on the ways we can create crucial habitat resources for wildlife and winter um the topics in the talk include creating spaces for toads and amphibians to hibernate insect life cycles winter birds providing food resources and Hydration Stations ideas and processes are contextualized as they historically
Occurred in the landscape with clear applications to garden design so it’s my pleasure to introduce our speaker Dr sha mosam a conservation ecologist certified wildlife biologist and author with expertise in pollinator and plant communities his published Works include scientific peer-reviewed articles educational articles and videos on insect and wildlife habitat Wildlife
Gardening books and a variety of informational pieces he’s worked across the country on restoration and conservation projects as well as collecting data publishing papers and studying ecosystems habitats insects and Wildlife life cycles his expertise and experience brings restoration practices Wildlife life cycles and Gardens together to create robust habitats and
Gorgeous Urban Landscapes and I know that you all have a gorgeous Urban landscape been working with native plants so again this is wild uh Wild Ones greater Baltimore and we’re really glad to have you here um the organization is Nationwide and um there’s over 9,000 members in 35 States
And um we welcome you to formally join us with a membership if you are able to do that and you just need to go to Wild on.org jooin to do that all right I’m going to go ahead and let Sean take over thank you thank you so much Amanda uh I’ll
Just start by sharing my screen so that we can get to the presentation and there we go okay so real fast uh about me is I work currently as a Consulting Wild Life biologist and help uh solar farms and wind farms kind of get through the public processes and priting issues um
In the past I’ve worked it for non-government conservation agencies I’ve worked in uh partnership with government agencies to do conservation and I’ve worked for private conservation organizations as well I bring a bunch of research and and background information to all those conservation projects and have been learning with everyone that I
Do so I’m excited to bring that information here to this presentation and talk about some of the things that I find are typically left out of conservation practices and then narrowing that down to what we can do in our Urban environments before I get started I definitely want to thank
Amanda Ray for inviting me to speak today and the Wild Ones greater Baltimore area so in this talk we’ll start talking with some of the ecology and urbanization landscape design affects things that are going on in the landscape um we’ll I’ll move into providing year round habitat and
Overwintering spaces and then how to add structure with natural Woods mulch soil and stone habitat designs and then pepper throughout all this will be seasonal maintenance small scale disturbance pruning trimming and sculpting plants all these things that we can do to make our uh our urban areas
Meet codes that might be in place and provide habitat for the Wildlife which is the main goal what we’re doing so to start off let’s Zoom way out and look at what our ecosystems and uh succession and most of us will have learned about ecosystem succession through a model that looks something
Like this where annual or araceous plants uh colonize the land those grow for a few years as perennial plants also begin to colonize that area that gives way to shrublands and then saplings of forest and that eventually leads to a climax community of a forest then some sort of catastrophe happens and
Everything resets somewhere back to the sebaceous plant community and although this model does offer a really good beginning footstep it really doesn’t give us the full picture and leads us to having a lot of mistakes and part of that is because that kind of process really only happens
In very unique situations such as new islands forming in the ocean which only four have formed in the last 150 years uh major land slides and then lava flows instead what’s happening when there’s some type of catastrophe in most situations is that the not or the plant material and the resources that existed
In that plant Community still are present in the landscape and the native uh the herbaceous plants begin colonizing again because the sun can reach the ground so a different way to think about this is when you see an article about creating pollinator habitat or creating Wildlife areas in your garden most of
Them focus on plant lists and many of them ignore habitat which includes the non- floral resources that are important for so many animals most people who are doing gardening tend not to manage a forest in their backyard but instead focus on the meadow to the Forest Edge type habitat
So if we zoom in on what this natural Community would exist in the uh historic timeline we would be seeing herbaceous meow being filled with tall snags laying down pieces of wood as well as all of the underground structures that a forest would be growing um this is feeding a nutrient
Cycle this is as time goes on that wood breaks down various animals are going to use the wood in different stages some animals need fresh wood for eating like uh many of your X beetles those create nests for uh bees that uh Nest above ground as that wood decays it creates a
Warmer environment typically holds more moisture that’s used by a lot of nesting reptiles including snapping turtles uh rard sliders uh and then over wintering organisms like toads amphibians nudes and even some bees prefer that really broken down wood so we want to make sure that we’re understanding what this
Overall habitat should look like and kind of get rid of the ideas that we’ve been told through the plant list of what should be in our Meadows in addition to that model the other thing that’s missing is all of the habitat Engineers that exist um or existed in uh pre-colonization times
Most of the large megap in our on our continent have been excerp or their populations have been severely reduced except for Deer uh but all of these animals played Major roles in disturbances and creating shelters for other organisms in browsing plants which allowed sunlight to get further down into the
The plant Community but also triggered better growth from those plants which is why some plants if they’re not Disturbed become really scraggly and fall over or if you go and give them what’s called a Chelsea chop or trim them back in the middle of their growth period they grow
Back more robustly and it’s because they need that feedback system that’s no longer present so all of these animals had some role and some of them were browsing plants and and spreading seeds many of them create Burrows and shelters all of them are feeding into nutrient Cycles some of them are creating
Important disturbances that other Wildlife are dependent upon and I’m sorry I’m pausing because I meant to highlight something in this oh nutrient Cycles so one of the the biggest nutrient cycles and most important nutrient Cycles in North America that has been so severely disrupted most don’t even think about it anymore is the
Nutrients carried from the ocean into the interior of the continent on an annual basis and this happened because salmon would travel up our streams that were not damned and then bears would feed on those salmon which would die off every year those nutrients would be carried into the ecosystem through the
Bears and spread out which feeds a lot of the plants that became dependent upon them in areas like Alaska and parts of Canada where these bears are still able to do this we see a very different assemblage of plants compared to the areas where the Bears been removed or
The rivers have been damped and we’re attributing this to that just the lack of nutrient cycle but also the reality that all these nutrients that come from the ocean and make it Inland every year are disappearing so many of our habitats are degrading in one way or another
Unless we start to step in and make some changes so even if we step out to some of the beautiful natural areas that exist this is a meadow up in New Hampshire where a fire had swept through about 5 years before uh we can see you know the the Deadwood is present live
Trees there’s some succession happening the plants are here but we are still missing the massive animals that should be here as well there should be larger herds of elk moose deer that would have been browsing this forage down there should be beavers which would be
Flooding it so even if you go out and look at these Landscapes and want to bring it back to your house and emulate it understand that you’re only taking an idea that’s already a little bit out of its natural state and we’re going to break the network so all the animals
That you see in the same square footage that your house has most of those animals can survive in that area because they are networked to the surrounding landscape and when we start to emulate things in an urban landscape where there’s a lot of Lawns a lot of cement
We’re detaching that so it is understandable that we should see less abundance of those animals but we should will also see an increase in some of the populations that are no longer being predated upon and that can lead to issues so we will I’ll talk about how to
Monitor and things to keep an eye out for um which a lot of people think just let nature take its course in the urban environment and instead what we’re really doing is letting a rock roll down the hill without any any breaks and it can be kind of damaging so we don’t want
To do that if we take a winter aspect of a meadow as well this is one of the conservation areas in New York this did did not have any of the M the big animals that uh should be present on this except for deer and you can see
Just smooth fields of snow this is a week after a snow event had happened there’s some structure uh the plants uh the woodier plants are staying up the the vegetation That Grew tall has now been pushed down that was soft but there should have been clearing of this snow
From larger animals moving through here from wolf packs moving through and from people moving through because that that disturbance of the snow isn’t happening many of the herbivores like deer aren’t able to access the forage that would be present on the ground also many birds that forge on the seeds that are going
Be pressed into the ground don’t have access to the soil anymore one other thing about snow is although it is cold it is an insulator so when it is -20 outside with a layer of snow the ground doesn’t get as cold as if it’s -20 outside and there’s been
No snow with animals disturbing snow pack and exposing the ground and the soil for other animals to get into it also exposes that ground level to more intense colds and that chills the ground even longer and some seeds and some plants actually need those longer periods of coal which is why we’re
Seeing in some Gardens or in some areas plants are shifting northward because they’re not getting cold enough winter temperatures like they used to when animals were distur the snow pack so to kind of uh hammer this home we bring it back to our yards is if we are thinking about the creating
Wildlife habitat in our yards and we’re only thinking about plants we’re really only need a picture that looks like this but if we start to look at our yards from the wildlife perspective and start asking what does this need to survive for a full year you know where does it
Shelter for the winter where does it shelter in the summer what are some of the microhabitats that it needs for uh completing its life cycle many amphibians need water for a period of time many insects need water for a period of time uh Native bees need specific nesting sites be it’s soil or
Above ground and then of course uh predatory animals like our amphibians need prey and then we need to ask is there enough prey habitat is there enough food for the prey and overall is there enough food for the animal and that will give us a more robust picture
Of what we should be planting and designing in our yards that includes both above ground and below ground when we’re looking at those resources though we need to understand how they should exist in the landscape so earlier we talked about how the models of plant succession kind of miss out on the
Non-floral resources that would also present a landscape and any ecosystem that you’re looking at in North America is going to have some sort of transient vegetation community over time if it was left alone um there are small sporadic rainfall and drought that’s going to affect plant establishment and plant die
Off forests and grasslands are going to have fires there’s going to be pest outbreaks there going to be floods so all of these ecosystems that exist when they we look smaller at their habitats they should have resources like wood replenishing because of this uh transient plant Community when we are in the wild
However or when we’re looking at our yards typically we are not trying to facilitate plant Community succession instead we’re trying to manage for that plant community so when I was working in Nevada this is Lee Meadows uh it’s right outside of Las Vegas but it’s at 10,000
Feet or 9,000 feet um and this has been managed by the fishing or the US Forest Service as a metal for over 100 years because they want this to be a meadow they’ve suspended the plant and habitat succession by by preventing Woody encroachment typically in our
Gardens we do the same thing we don’t really want trees to start showing up in places where we want our full Sun Meadow plants growing um in most cases both in the wildlands in our and in our home environments we are going to remove or regulate the interval of
Disturbance uh and we are PRI this because we’re prioritizing the vegetation community over the ecosystem or the habitat that we are trying to see and unintentionally what happen s is habitats start to degrade populations for uh that are dependent on these uh habitats don’t move like they should with the transient vegetation
Community over time and therefore actions need to be taken this metal that we’re looking at right here like I said has been managed as a metal for over 100 years invasive animals have been able to come up and mow it down their soil is degraded the nutrients are missing in most of this
Our job was to try and restore this Meadow by planting and seeding it with the meadow plants that should exist and in most places that did not take however in one of the areas that we did or into two the areas that we did the outplanting we had also mulched
Everything with local trees and local down limbs seven years later those plants are still doing okay but everywhere else that we seated isn’t and part of that is because these Meadows are dependent upon the breakdown of Woody materials and building that soil back up so in contrast this Meadow has been managed
This way for over a hundred years where a similar Meadow on the same Mountain uh that had burned five years before we can see it should be tall you know three to four feet tall in grasses and shrubs there should be saplings growing back there should be trees and everything
Else so again when you’re outside and in our natural lands make sure that you start to put a filter on that even though we’re in the natural environment it’s no longer in the balance that it should be from 400 years ago so first um introduction of some of
The maintenance that we’ll talk about uh with The Meadows that or uh full sun environments that we have in our Gardens many people are trying to bring this idea of leave the leaves which is a fantastic and important step in the nutrient cycle for many Meadows however in a natural environment leaves should
Be f and then blown around a little bit many mow plants cannot grow through a thick Leaf layer so if we’re taking all the leaves that fall on the driveway and the roof and the road and pile them on you can unfortunately create too thick
Of a mulch or too dense of a layer for the plants to come back year after year so make sure that’s being spread out the meadow that’s being pictured here on the left is in New York the land owners had been doing leave the leaves in quotations uh for about six years but
They were collecting all the leaves from the driveway from the road and from the lawn and putting them in this area so we had to come in and just disturb all this Leaf litter pull it all up and there was literally just layer after layer after
Layer of leaves that so many of the seeds couldn’t establish through and the plants that were that had lived underneath it were unable to grow through so they all died out also keep in mind that many of the plants that are growing in these Open Meadow or in our fulls Sun areas would
Not naturally grow next to a tree so they’re not going to be used to that leaf fall different trees can also produce pH changing leaves pine trees for example create more acidity oak trees are known to produce a little bit more robust or neutral um some trees actually produce
Toxins that suppress plant growth around them most famously being eucalyptus which is non native but it is the best example the best way to incorporate leave the leaves in your yards is to create piles and Tuck those piles of leaves under underneath trees um in deep shade areas or underneath secured
Branches the animals that are using leaf piles don’t ride the leaves down to the ground from the canopy that’d be a terrible life strategy and there are a few insects that do that but for the most part animals are finding areas that are already in the micro habit that they
Need and then the leaves are adding extra insulation so they are choosing that pile not ending up in that pile uh the other thing is if you’re going to do deep layers of mulch make sure that you’ve marked where your plant should be growing out and then in the
Beginning of Spring go ahead and just pull the leaves away from the the stem so that they can come up and see the sunlight when they start to emerge so a real life example of how leave the leaves should look this is a giant oak tree very healthy Oak Tree in
Alabama I think if I remember correctly and uh the leaves have just fallen off you can see that there are still arious plants able to be seen under underneath the plant but the leaves have blown into the taller shrubby materials and that’s where insects would be nesting as well
As any uh Wildlife that is looking for a more insulated place to overwinter so we go back to the idea of the garden that is looking at habitat um how this is functioning in the winter is Sandy soils that have been nested in by animals these are immobile so they
Aren’t able to move or find new places so this is typically selected by the Builder for under the assumption that the they understand what’s going on and everything should survive just fine um creating Sandy your soils underneath we’ll talk about this more in later on in the presentation is important for a
Lot of nesting bees producing organic material underground mimics the root systems of trees that either die naturally or would have been killed in that um Community shifting event like I said earlier turtles will nest in that area but a number of different insects including mobs crickets uh beetles will bury down into
Those areas to pupate because it’s a little bit warmer but it’s also easy for them to move because most of them are non-fossil oil meaning they they can’t excavate soil the way that other animals can uh have different diameters of logs around because the log works as an
Insulator the outside will get cool to when exposed CER temperatures and the inside will stay a more constant temperature untrimmed plants will hold up snow again creating an insulated layer that’s at least at a minimum a wind break but also will typically stay warmer from the organic material
Underneath keeping it warm as it breaks down and warm in comparative to the outside wind temp windchill temperature or overall lows of the and if we do this correctly you will start to see animals de your animal populations become more robust in the spring and summer but if it’s
Done very well you should start to see the animals that are active during the winter and traces that they’re around as well like here where Chipmunks are running in and out of some of the lots that we had placed out in one of The Meadows when you’re creating your
Habitats the other thing to consider is what is the overwintering strategy of the wildlife that you are trying to promote in your yard again our yards aren’t going to be able to support the entire ecosystem that once exist in that area but we can try and support a few
Different animals and in turn have the umbrella effect where animals that are associated with them will also be able to succeed um many insects uh overwinter at some stage of their life many do it in egg which is IM mobile some do it in their instars like caterpillars or early
Nymph stages some insects like morning Club cloaks and crickets over winter as adults uh many amphibians over winter as adults as well and they hunker down and hibernate they do not come out there’s a little bit of warm temperatures they stay down for the entire time whereas
There’s a number of birds most mammals and uh even some insects that are active during the winter months in contrast there are number of animals that say nope not doing the cold and they migrate south so uh keep that in mind as well when you are planning for your yard
Because some animals that are going to be present in our Gardens are not going to be present in the winter and that’s wonderful as well so an example of uh animals that are going to be active at different parts of the year is the Luna Moth these typically have two generations in the
Connecticut uh or um the Northeast area the spring and summer population forage feed find a old leaf pile Nestle down and emge in the late summer this life cycle continues and then in the fall when the fifth in Star occurs it climbs out of the tree crawls around the
Ground looking for protected areas like Hollow logs or underneath large branches where leaf piles have secured and where they’re not necessarily getting soaked there’s somewhat of a dryness they’re looking for a specific humidity and that’s when they will create their cocoons and Nestle down for the winter and weighted out in an immobile
Stage similarly the monarch butterfly one of the animals that I study especially in ecology is one of the best studied organisms when it comes to insects and although monarchs migrate south for the winter the things that feed upon monarchs don’t so the host specific to Kin fly which is uh pictured
Here in the center teralis cotus which is a pupil parasito the generalist Predators like ants wheel bugs and pistes lost these all survive the winter in our Gardens and if we’re monitoring our Monarch populations or any of our Wildlife populations and realize that there are things eating them that are becoming too
Abundant um it is honestly the best course to take some action simply because again our Gardens are not in that Network in a wild landscape and the things that should be curbing the populations of the predators of the natural enemies aren’t going to be present and if we understand how these
Organisms over winter we can try and modify some of the habitat in our yard to prevent them from finding space uh pises was typically over winter in trees underneath bark We Believe teram codus over Winters as a pupa in the ground so if we’re finding infected chrysalises it’s important to remove
Them um wheel bugs typically over winter eggs ants over winter underground in their nest and kin flies over winter as Pupa in the ground as well so an example of creating some type of disturbances when you realize that the populations are a little bit uh out of
Whack is presented here on the right so this is Pine coft Meadows in New York it was another area that I was in charge uh managing and after doing some Monarch monitoring where I collected caterpillars looked at the uh survival rate was and what the paration rate was
We realized that this Meadow that had been managed as a meow for 60 years was really just feeding the organisms that eat monarchs and not really helping the Monarch population and because the manage system that we do is prioritizing it as a meadow and suspending that habitat succession it is allowing parasites
Predators to build up there are ways that we can change the way that we are managing that system to improve the habitat just by simply modifying the interor disturbance it’s still prioritized in the vegetation Community but it should help make populations move around a little bit and recreate some of
The non-floor resources that these this whole habitat is dependent upon and then we also need to add some things so in this case we knew that those parasitoids and natural enemies were present in the landscape but we don’t necessarily know exactly where they were going so what we
Decided to do is right after the monarchs ated we went in and mowed half of the meadow pretty low to the ground to hopefully remove any of the sites that these animals would have overwintered or chosen to and that leaves half of the area for the other
Animals that are taking or living in this in this habitat it gives them access to a new floral resource the following year in doing it the way that we did instead of just cutting down half of the meadow in a straight line we left little Islands of plants and this was to
Create bird shelter so when snow falls it will create a little umbrella under here and birds can fly up into this still eat seeds if they’re present but also get out of the wind out of the severe cold and seek shelter in any of the storms uh so you can see those
Islands of Golden Rod that were present around here but again simply by interrupting this we’re also suppressing these late succession Meadow plants and hopefully promoting the the earlier Meadow plants like blackeyed Susan some of the milk weeds and a few others so although having a metal like this some
Of you might be lucky enough to have this much acreage or living in a place where two or three acres is the minimum plot size but most people are going to be dealing with something about the tenth of an acre when we’re talking about Guardians and housing developments
And luckily there’s already a lot of gardian designs that are inspired ired from nature and it’s up to you on when you are out in the world what kind of habitat do you want to create and what kind of Guardian design you want to adopt and once you settle on those then
You can start looking at ways to um build structure with plants and rocks which is typically done in garden designs that are not lawn focused um you can create structure with plants and you can also modify the plant structure through pruning which is a natural process through browsing of animals and
Simply just create the the shapes that you want most Wildlife are not going to be too concerned with the shape of the plant when we’re pruning them you also want to have clear borders like paths mode areas um or use of rocks Etc so that people can see what you’re doing is
Intentional this especially true if you’re dealing with County ordinances city ordinances um and planting in your front yard and dealing with nosy neighbors so when we’re doing or creating our Landscapes it’s important to ask ourselves what resources are missing so we can look at our habitats from the
Specific Wildlife that we are trying to promote but we can also look at the natural environments around us and start asking you know what what do we no longer allow to be in these Urban environments or really should be some of the things that are typically destroyed
When we start urbanizing areas of soil diversity that includes the depth texture and the slope native plant communities are typically removed as most of us are already aware of ecosystem Engineers especially burrowing animals are excerp as well as large meapa caves and crevices are typically filled in large clean temporary Water Resources
As well are filled in and then wood Woody materials and leaf litter things that people see as dying or decaying are typically removed as well but they uh do serve important functions in our Gardens so let’s start let’s start talking about designing Gardens from the
Ground up and if you are lucky enough to live in an area where the ground wasn’t really heavily modified to build the houses that is awesome you probably don’t have to worry about this however if you’re living in a Housing Development like I do now here in Texas
Um there’s not a lot of actual soil present and most of the area was heavily modified bringing in Clays and heavy Sands for structural purposes for the roads and the houses in doing that and then planting Lawns on top of it most people who plant
Trees or shrubs near my house um or in my neighborhood typically find that their plants are dying and it’s because there’s not enough soil or enough uh space for those plants to actually grow underground so keeping that in mind understanding that perennial plants can have Deep Roots especially in
Uplands we want to make sure our Guardian beds are deep enough and uh A good rule of thumb is to go at least 6 in below the freeze line in winter so if you don’t know what your freeze line is there are a number of Fairly inexpensive
Round thermometers and you can see how deep it is there are also some counties that give reports on how deep the freeze or um the yeah the freeze is going into the soils garden beds should always have an appropriate depth which I said about six inches more than the
Frostline shallow soils will lead to sick plants it will also lead to animals not being able to escape the cold and dying over winter having deep native soils will give borrowing animals enough area to escape the weather as well as enough space for your plants to grow and remain
Healthy so when you’re looking at recreating removed resources and and the soils that are there it’s important to understand what the soils kind of look like in your area to begin with in a natural area it’s very easy to overlook what the diversity of soils um exists because it’s covered in Plants
However there’s a few ways that you can um start to pay attention to those things the next time you’re out if you see any creek beds cut through uh see where the roots are existing it’s typically um on top and there’ll be a nutrient for soil underneath so this
Will give you an idea of where your nutrient rich soil should be um if trees are falling over this is another way to gauge where the um soil that plants are growing in how deep that is and that will typically lift up this creates a whole new habitat and then nutrient for
Soils are exposed down here burrowing animals typically expose uh soil textures as well as deposit nutrient pores soils into areas that then begin working their way into the nutrient cycle of the plants breaking down every year and if there have been any fires fires will sometimes break at soil lines
Uh typically do due to Rich hummus layers or compaction so you can look at if there’s been any fire lines types of soils that might exist in your area another thing to keep in mind is that natural ecosystems have topography so when trees fall over when animals are
Burrowing when plants die and Decay this creates topography and out here in the southwest that you can see right here on the right when large shrubs decompose or when burrowing animal um towns uh start to collapse they create these divots and the rain in the area simply runs off
Carries the seeds into these areas and you get these pollinator oacs now of course in the southwest that makes sense because a few you know few millimeters more of water is going to make a huge difference but this does uh carry over to the Northeast where you have a lot
More rain in that um seeds are going to be carried into these areas it’s going to create different uh plant populations similarly there are topographic on a larger scale changes where you’ll get these Fern F or these little Groves or water just can’t really escape this area
But it’s also not um the soil is porous enough that it is allowed to drain out so it’s not actually wetland in comparison when you look at restoration projects or even a lot of the old agricultural Fields it’s smooth so this is a stream that was uh reconstructed after it was a major
Uh pipeline put through here and you can see that they just graded and boiled everything so it’s smooth and then applied the seed this picture here on the right is an old agricultural field that’s been left to turn to Forest and you can see that it’s still really
Smooth it’s going to take another 100 to 200 years for this soil to reform like it does in the old growth where you should have bumps and divots that animals are going to be able to seek shelter in find water in and really affect the local microhabitats of those areas
Some of the soal types that you can bring into your yard um can be classified using the tary diagram which is pictured right here classifying your soils based using based on the tary diagram is just laying out the percent of sand silt and clay that you have present there are a number
Of videos on how to do this it takes about 24 hours a jar your soil and some water you shake it up and you mark layers as they settle out at what minute one hour and one day once you know what your soil is uh you can start to see if you actually
Have so diversity on your property and soil diversity is important because Wildlife use soils in different ways soils also have different temperature insulation Pro properties where clay stays colder for longer versus sand which will allow water in faster and dries out quicker animals that are going to nest
In the soil like our bees like our reptiles they need specific soils and you don’t have to modify large sads of land we’re only talking about maybe one foot across and 18 inches deep two feet deep so it’s easy to bring that diversity back um if
You have a lot of bees but you don’t know what kind of soil you want to create to help them because that bee species has not necessarily been described in that way or because you haven’t had the time to identify the bees uh some good news is that the nest
Have been studied and Quantified using the tary tary DI diagram all land in this heavier sand to uh really heavy clay type soils so you can put these into your yard or into your garden anywhere even if it’s around an hbac unit a long fence line to try and improve uh the diversity
Of soil as well as create spaces for these to be nesting um again it’s it doesn’t have to be large spaces so when we’re installing uh if we’re putting in some dead wood or putting in some rockscapes you can easily modify the Sands and soils underneath those areas as well as
Between plants um and again it doesn’t have to be huge it just has to be six inches deeper than the frost line and maybe 18 inches across so you should be solid with those uh measurements and then we can look at you know a wild setting to see how different
Soils are going to affect the way that the snow builds up the vegetation communities and everything else and this creates different uh thermal gradients in the winter habitats another way that um I typically do this so here’s a garden bed that we put in our backyard for some food
Gardens um with some thick Limestone borders just to make it look more attractive simply lifting one of those stones putting a hole in the weed liner digging down about 18 inches because it doesn’t get that cold where we live filling it with uh local unem untreated Mulch and then just sprinking over some
Of the sandy soil the border is still very much supported there’s just a little area that is not and it doesn’t really change the Outlook of the landscape but it’s now toad friendly and toads crickets beetles even pupating Ms can find their way into that area and
And carry out their life cycle as necessary similarly um large rocks are quite often installed with a little bit of modification to the soil however there’s generally no space left under those large rocks for animals to utilize it as shelter and sometimes there’s a weed liner that’s put around
So if we kind of take a theoretical approach to this and understand that the soil is modified just enough to support the rock so that it doesn’t fall over and then sometimes a weed liner is put in if this is the approach we’re using we simply want to make sure that there
Is a we uh hole in the weed liner so that animals can access the soil that we have modified in this uh modified soil column we can simply add another column of soil that is diff from the surrounding area or if we want to do something larger you
Want to make sure the rock is still supported so that if something changes here if animals are in here this won’t shift and crush anything that’s in there or simply just shift and and cause problems in the landscape but you can very large logs underneath these rocks
As well to create that uh natural process of woods breaking down and creating uh microhabitats for our Wildlife to survive the winter and carry out their life cycles so again if you did that with these kind of large Rock installs it would still look the same but it would
Now support amphibian some of the mammals lizards and even uh red uh NES that might be in your area burrowing animals are typically removed from our Landscapes uh sorry real fast I just want to make sure I’m still connected to the internet burrowing animals are typically removed from our Landscapes and although
We don’t want to really introduce burrowing animals back into our Gardens uh especially like groundhogs or prie dogs if you’re in that area uh because it would be dangerous you don’t want to step outside and have a brand new hle that you can break your leg in
Uh it’s easy enough to recreate those spaces though so Burrows are important for a number of overwintering animals including box turtles toads many different uh insects as well and the way to recreate them is to uh design hideaways in raised beds is the easiest but you can also just bury them
In the ground just make sure that there are strong walls and strong ceilings so they won’t Cate in uh you want to make sure that the areas are covered by at least 18 in or more of soil for thermal insulation from the Sun and for the winter but again if
You get are living in an area that is extremely cold you probably want to go a little bit deeper than this uh tunnel should be two inches larger than your target Wildlife so if you’re trying to go for box turtles which could be about four to five inches in carrus you should
Aim for a tunnel width about seven inches and to be very clear just because you’ve designed these Tunnels for these animals it doesn’t mean they’ll be used by those species and quite often will be adopted by non Target wildli that you may not want in the area some of the
Simple designs include putting in the drain pipes into rock walls um but then just simply modifying the back a little bit with some mulch or some Sandy soils so that animals can dig down a little bit further you can also create them using totes uh turn this take the lid
Off turn it over and then cut holes on both sides so animals can move through it you’ll create these spaces in a similar fashion many of the Denning uh organisms and borrowing animals that uh would be present in our landscape are no longer present you can either create
Above ground shelters or below ground shelters above ground shelters aren’t necessarily going to be great for wintering overwintering organisms but they will be great for the summer however if you modify the soil underneath you can create spaces that’s a little bit more dry and animals will
Go and overwinter in the in that space similarly if there’s enough room above ground animals that use leaves to create nests uh will bring leaves into that area and create their own space if you want want to create a underground Den we can borrow some of the conservation
Tools used for tortoises and for burrowing Nows which honestly the most common thing they do is take large dog kennels uh just the top of it lay it down on the ground cover the front with stone so it looks more natural and then cover the whole thing with soil you can
Also use mulch or wood chips to create that insulation that’s necessary and if you have a large piece of property this is great for foxes raccoons possums um and really help out replacing the animals that would have dug out these larger caves for the wild myet in
The area again it’s a really good idea to loosen up the soil on the bottom and to make sure that these areas drain so that nobody ends up direct me uh features that are important to include make sure that you have sturdy walls and a good ceiling loose oil on
The bottom and then vertical soils like you see in these caves here are a little bit more difficult to create but they can be done on rock walls or um raise planter beds if you’re careful but honestly I do not recommend it simply because the chance of it caving or
Sliding over really does become a problem similarly if you are lucky enough to have rock walls on your property these probably already have a bunch of soil starting to form around them but you can modify without disturbing the wall areas around the side that will help create either the tunnels or the vertical
Soil another option for um creating summer and winter habitat uses this idea of the volcano irrigation method and I’m showing you pictures from the southwest because there’s not a lot of vegetation to disrupt the view of what we’re talking about but uh in the Northeast this method is still used in are is
Where it’s hard to irrigate or you want to Simply do a flooding type watering for the plants to have been transplanted um although this is a good way to do watering and can um create some microhabitats a better way to improve this um especially for our urban
Areas we may want a little bit of structure um or for trees where you can’t get in and weed so in this example my neighbors were looking for a weed-free kind of approach because because they couldn’t mow close enough to the tree to prevent the Bermuda grass
From growing and they couldn’t get in there in weed whack without damaging the tree so all we did is took the volcano well that was um already present and put in some support rocks and then some mulch to create a matrix that the water could easily move through as well
As organisms could easily move in and out of then we put a supporting layer of cardboard in this uh for this install we use cardboard but you can use metal grates if you want to if it’s for something longer um or any other sturdy material that will uh withstand being the weight
On top it of whatever you put on top uh we then put around some border rocks to just make a clean look and then fill the area with gravel this is now perious to water the tree is easily um irrigated the trunk flare is not uh covered so it will
Continue to grow in a healthy fashion and it looks pretty decent a side cut is however that in this wet area there’s a more damp space for wildlife to go some crickets and toads love this area because it’s in Texas but it will also work in the
Northeast uh the rocks that are on top again you want to make sure that there’s enough support underneath that this doesn’t crush anything and then the loose soil that’s already present in here is allowing the water to infiltrate pretty quickly and these animals can burrow down if they need to for the
Winter native plant communities typically removed so designing any landscape with native plants as much as possible will help bring those native plant communities back and the animals that are dependent upon those species of course follow design architecture and guidelines to create that beautiful aesthetic because a lot of people are confusing using native
Plants with creating a wildscape and wild Scapes have their place for sure but in places that have high fires have lots of people um or even just a lot of pests it’s understandable that neighbors are going to get upset when an area looks like an unkempt weed lot instead
Of a garden that matches the overall landscape and it’s easy enough to go in and organize these these plants so that people appreciate what they’re looking at and the way to select plants for that kind of organization is to make sure that you’re planting within the range
And the habitat that you have is suitable for the plant this includes sun exposure water availability and soil type um ask yourself what pollinators and insects are going to utilize those plants um a lot of different organizations are starting to develop a um connection or uh nwor nwork of
Pollinators that are utilizing the flowers so it’s a good thing to understand in my most recent book I triy to list out all of the bees that had been collected on the plants for the species that are included in that uh in that document similarly ask if it’s going to
Be producing seeds that birds might use or if it’s going to produce uh habitat that might work for nesting and then how other animals might be using these these plants and then of course what is the response to trimming some plants don’t do well with trimming other plants do
Great with trimming uh a lot of the cone flowers you can cut cut them back once or twice a year but a number of shrubs like Texas sage blueberries um even American holly do really well if you trim them over and over again and you can shape them to
Show people that what you’re doing is in fact intentional some flowers on the other hand this land uh land owner learned the hard way grow however they want to and you can’t really trim them so in the winter this place looks phenomenal everything is trimmed up but
In this season they just had an amazing display of sunflowers that they had to keep tying back and keeping off the sidewalk similarly with pruning um you all probably are aware that deer really love plants and will kill plants pretty readily if they are not protected when I
Was working at westest Land Trust um we accidentally realized that if we put up these deer cages um and carefully secured them the deer would were able to browse the plants once they reached the side of the cage which is what these plants are supposed to be doing they’re
Supposed to be feeding the local Wildlife but the deer weren’t able to get in and kill these plants either through rubbing their antlers or simply over consuming them so if you can pick the right kind of cage or even shape your cages to a design that you want a
Topiary you can get deer to kind of work with you to keep things neat and tight you can feed the deer but you can also protect your plants which then will feed the insects that are dependent on those plants as well water in both summer and winter is
Hard to come by in urban environments the water that is available in urban environments is typically going to be polluted by Road salts um overall pollution in general and just uh run off all the things that carry carry uh chemicals that aren’t supposed to be in our water spot
The best way to provide water in the winter is to create shallow basins with rough AG with rough edges that will allow any animals that fall in to crawl out you want to place these in the full sun use a dark rock or a dark surface so
That it can absorb solar heat that will helpen out the ice you can also use uh heated pumps if you have access to those in nature we should be seeing running Creeks the sun melts things again there’s different temperature gradients so the snow melts a little bit and
Animals typically have access to water throughout the day and throughout all the seasons similarly in the summer um if you’re trying to create large clean temporary Water Resources um trying to emulate some of the emergent Wetlands or the vernal pools is important especially for amphibians and many of our insects in
Carrying out their life cycle drywood or dead wood and leaf litter are typically hard to find in urban environments as well but they’re really easy to bring into our Gardians and you can do it with clear log Borders or mulch borders um you can tuck mulch piles away underneath
Shrubs in the dirt as I showed earlier you can utilize uh stumps Roots trunks as centerpieces uh a few people are really starting to catch on to the idea that a fallen root Crown once it’s cleaned doubt can be absolutely stunning so I was really surprised to see uh play
Selling one of these uh for a landscape design if you’re lucky enough to have a tree fall over in your yard and not damage anything I highly recommend trying to um build around that newly created vertical soil because so many Wildlife utilize that space similarly um some of the wooden
Resources that people uh without realizing are trying to um they do it by bringing in be hotels birad boxes or shelter boxes now be hotels most bees do not uh chew out wood tunnels they reutilize ones that beetles have already made with exception being the Carpenter B um and a
Few no actually the Carpenter B is the the biggest exception so in the wild what we’re looking at is B tunnels that are are Beetle tunnels that have been excavated while the beetle are feeding on the slot they mature and evolve into or uh metamorphose into beetles then these
Holes are fredly open and clean and bees will utilize these to Creator cells uh you can if you want to drill holes into wood stumps this way however as this dries and cracks it will allow those cells to dry out in an unnatural way or let uh parasor have access to it so
This will still provide be nesting sites but the mortality will increase year after year building your own is the best option and this is because the way native bees nest is they produce females and the deepest cells and then the last few cells of any tunnel are going to be
Male if we have cells that are or tunnels that are too short that are typically sold at retail stores or online what ends up happening is not enough females are being produced more males are being produced and these males end up harassing the females and this also doesn’t have the U
Uh sorry misspoke there this uh has too many nests in an area that can become infected with polles and uh parasitoids that are then able to find all the nests in one one go so you want to produce bee hotels that are uh low in number and can easily be
Spread throughout the landscape like they would naturally occur similarly when we’re looking at bird boxes or shelter boxes these are emulating or mimicking hollow wood that would be existing in um dead tree branches live trees as well as Fallen uh tree trunks some animals require a specific
Size hole for uh entering into their nest they some animals like specific shapes there is a fantastic book called bird houses that explains the different shapes and sizes that different birds will utilize and definitely worth checking out larger animals like possums and squirrels will require larger holes
For them to access and carry their Leaf litter and everything else to create their nest another option that you can do um if you have a larger property is if you have a tree fall down instead of doing just a wood pile create a wall around that wood
Pile with some of this the thinner cut but thicker pieces of the tree and this will just create a dening space that animals like possums raccoons foxes can really move materials into and create their own little Den uh and help their populations out as well simly as the the wood is breaking
Down naturally like I said earlier different stages of the wood being it you know brand new and healthy or really decayed is going to support different Wildlife typically when uh arborists leave a pile of Vault around I this happened at a number of my friends houses this is my friend Mike that uh
When they go to move that mulch in a year or two they find Turtles and they’re shocked to find that Turtles would be nesting in there and it’s like well yes because there’s no longer these dying decomposing root masses that should exist in our landscape because we
Don’t like them we cut them down and we tear everything up so allowing some of that wood to break down is important I understand for people uh any any homeowner you don’t want this to be next to your house you can be concerned about fungus or any of the insects that be
Breaking down this wood spreading to the wooden be of the house so let this happen away from your home similarly let it be let that wood be a little bit more wet than anything else the organisms that are able to live on that wet wood
As it breaks down are not going to be able to survive on the wood that is in your house and therefore you there shouldn’t be a transfer of any any concern for damaging the wooden uh wooden structures things that you can add to your yard include bird boxes um you can
Add Hollow logs I’ve had the best uh best success by reaching out to local arborus and seeing if they’ll hold any that they come across uh sometimes it takes a lot of convincing but typically if you tell them that you’ll pay them or simply just take large pieces off their their hands
That they wouldn’t be able to use for selling for wood or anything else um they become amenable to letting you take wood from them if you are putting out bird boxes uh a good idea is to fill that bird box halfway with dry leaves um or animal fur
For the winter this will emulate many of the animals that are missing various squirrels possums raccoons create nests that then other animals would utilize in the winter but again in our Urban environments those animals are typically extrap or removed as well as the overall dening sites for them so by putting Leaf
Litter back into a bird box you’re actually creating a space that um some birds will go into some um like Harvest men various crickets various insects will try and find that space to spend the winter uh choosing wooden logs that have peeling bark is an important addition to any
Yard that space is used by a number of beetles and mods as well as morning cloaks and commas for spending the winter both morning cloaks and commas get into that area as adults and then on the warm days that’s why you see them first in the spring is because they’re
Already fully formed and they come out on the warm days adding decomposing wood above and below ground will serve as nesting and overwintering sites for a variety of animals and just by doing it you’re allowing those animals to find that resource instead of necessarily trying to Target one species in specific uh
Similarly as wood breaks down the bacteria and the fungus that are breaking it down are creating heat and that creates a thermal insulation that’s just a little bit warmer than the surrounding environment and important for a number of animals trying to survive the winter if you’re trying to feed the
Birds in the winter you may already be putting sew it out and if you think about it it’s a little odd to be providing animal fat to animals that don’t eat eat mammals or um large large predater wildlife and the reason that this sew is important is because these
Birds used to feed on the carasses that wolves and mountain lions and other Predators would have left behind um once animals are fed on some of that fat is left it’s allowed to to uh desiccate and then the birds go and feed on that in the winter however
Because we don’t have these animals we don’t have those carcasses and then the birds are left without the fat resources so putting SE out is important you can also plant native Berry producing shrubs and then of course dead wood and standing snags for any insects that might be active for the insect foraging
Animals like woodpeckers a list of good species to consider that are going to produce uh nuts or berries that can be utilized in the winter is listed right here if you’re interested um feel free to come back and look at this um and it adds a little bit of color to your landscape
Which is also wonderful last I want to talk about climate change um last year some of you may have heard that the USDA released a new sorry released a new Zone hardiness map and a lot of people were excited because because they’re now in a warmer Zone and they
Can plant new plants that are in warmer areas yes the Zone hardiness map is not really helpful for understanding what things are native to your area what the Zone hardness map is doing is is explaining where are the coldest temperatures or what are the lowest expected temperatures in
Winter the newest map uses 30 years and averages the lowest temperatures that were experienced in each region and unfortunately this is leading to a small error well a very large error but it’s it’s tracking a very different change so with climate change we are going to see warmer Winters
Overall we’re going to see later frosts we’re going to see more days with above freezing temperatures and we’re going to see less nights with freezing temperatures and that’s where the shifting North occurred because they took these averages however with climate change the uh strong polar jet stream that
Crosses or that circles the globe and corals the cold air when this cold air isn’t here and it’s warm it pushes that down it helps break down this jet stream and it makes it weaker that’s what’s creating these Arctic blasts the ones that we’re experienced this week the one
That made the news in 2021 these um Arctic blasts are going to create later last frosts and heavy freezes they’re going to create sporadic record setting lows and polar vortexes like again like we’re experiencing right now and that’s going to lead to mortality events in both plants and
Animals so for example if we look at the forecast for U this Wednesday across the country some areas are seeing expected temperatures for their Zone but others are not um the best breakdown is in the polar vortex of 2021 that hit on the new map all this yellow is supposed to be
About10 degrees as the lowest temperature reached in Fahrenheit however we were seeing below zero temperatures based on this graph here this isn’t just bad for the plants that we’re planting um I went out and did plant surveys right after this plant Vortex or this uh polar vortex hit and
Native plants were dying and or already dead similarly I got sent out to Corpus Christie the following week and was counting dead sea turtles and a whole bunch of other um animal that had died because of this storm this is going to continue um so the way that you plan for this is
To take a an inventory of your yard select plants that are based on re recent record lows not the new plant hard unit map so if you know that in the last five years you’ve reached ne5 don’t plant plants that can only survive to negtive five it’s just not
Going to work out well in the end we also want to provide ample shelters for winter wildlife um you can add uh branches to on top of snow which will create that wind break for animals to get into you can cut bushes back so that they create it naturally um provide
Deep Burrows that again below that freeze line um provide mulch piles that are deep thick enough um and provide Den sites so that animals can access those areas and get away from the winter cold and then of course any extra food and water for the animals that might be present in those
Storms so to end on a happy note let’s talk about our Meadows and our our full sun kind of Gardens and things that we can do to really help create robust yearly habitat as well as some of things we do for the snow so because we are suspending that plant succession and we
Aren’t going to be coming from a forest it’s important to spread a thin layer of locally SCE wood chips every few years you don’t have to do it every year just every few years you can also sprinkle manure around uh here and there to replicate some of the missing animals
And the abundance of those animals very large branches and L logs or uh piles of wood chips and do this every few years to renew that resource while letting it also carry on its natural life cycle to provide those microclimates for the animals that need it uh spot Mo areas where shortlived
Perennials are growing so if you have an area where Golden Rod is encroaching but you want the black ey Su to grow there definitely mow that a little bit more often only mow up to half of an area or trim up half of an area so that animals
That are in those stems are left in 50% of your yard and if they are taken away then you’re not going to completely remove them from your your uh landscape and then in the winter make sure you’re are clearing snow from some of the areas go outside and walk on your plants walk
On the areas let that soil get exposed again so that birds looking for seeds can access it um the soil itself can get cold and then any animals that are browsing some of uh the vegetation that might still be growing can get down there as well um kind of think about your
Landscape in this this kind of model instead of the original plant succession and identify all the resources that are missing from your habitat as they should occur in that natural succession but also that would be specifically used by FAL Wildlife uh try and keep those resources fresh especially for the
Overwintering animals and then also feel free to disturb logs and stones and soils because animals were doing that bears were tipping over Fallen logs woodpeckers were peeling them apart and that disturbance helps stop those resources from um really sealing with the soil and no longer providing shelter or access that many animals
Need because they can’t create them elves and with that the conclusions I hope everyone was able to take from this is that our Gardens are out of balance and require management um landscape designs can be created with a lot uh with really great habitat as the end
Product and it only takes a little bit of thoughtful use of native plants incorporating that diverse soil placing shelters rocks and water uh and wood into the landscape that animals can use and then trying to mimic the absent animal in the in the best way possible to emulate the natural processes and then
Remember native plants can be trammed shaped and sculpted for crisp looks and create important structure that Wildlife are going to use and with that I will take any questions um if you’re interested in picking up some of the op the topics discussed today it is presented in text and my book inviting
Pollinators and other Wildlife into your garden um otherwise it’s going to be on YouTube and there are other videos I have on YouTube for free if you are also interested in some of this more ecologically based conservation approach that’ll be coming out in my next book hopefully in 2025 called habitats and
Homes and with that I’ll turn it back to you Amanda thank you so much Sean that’s been so informative um we are now going to go into the Q&A and um Vania Frank our vice president and um chair of our programming is going to um moderate that
Thanks Amanda and Sean what a great talk so much information um to think about like when you’re planning your winter habitat um so enriching thank you so much for that um we have a few questions that came in in the chat and I’m going to read them
Out and then we can take any additional and people feel free to unmute yourself and um announce your question uh after the three that I have on the list already um so uh someone asked follow trees should I leave them intact as huge trees or cut into logs I want a best
Sequester carbon and of course leave the best habitat for our Wildlife yeah so that’s a very good question um and it it really comes down to how it fits into your landscape so if a tree falls over the street clearly don’t leave it intact it needs to be
Removed so that access can can can be achieved um for carbon sequestration as long as it is allowed to decay even get buried is going to be one option to sequester some of the carbon the best way to sequester carbon is actually to not let it decay at all and that’s not
What we want in this situation so um things getting turned into furniture or moved into bogs would would permanently secure that carbon but uh letting it just feed back into the natural nutrient cycles and allowing it to build uh the soils as it should will sequester the
Carbon as it naturally would have but some of that will be released as animals are breaking it down wonderful thank you does that answer the question mer would you is is there anything more that you were looking for or does that answer your question um no that answers my question
The trees fell over in a big storm and it’s out in my front yard which is all woods so um I I think that’s good this was a fabulous talk I can’t wait to listen to the recording again thank you thank you yeah with the Fallen one if
You want to cut up that wood and move it around like you’re not going to affect the carbon storage at that point um how you reutilize that wood in your yard will affect it though so if you let it decay or if you ship it off and have
Somebody be burn it like that’s definitely going to release more than if you let it sit somewhere in your yard and create bird houses or benches or any of that any of those kind of structures okay okay thanks thank you yeah and Betty asked uh please give a
Resource to go over the steps again for the soil area modification for amphibians and again I want to remind that we will have recording of This available at the end of it so if there’s something that you missed um you can Rel listen to the recording and take notes
Uh but if there’s anything additional Sean that you want to add as a resource that people can look at for you know I know we covered a few amphibians but is there like a comprehensive long list of different soils that different kinds of amphibians bees and other Wildlife
Prefer yes that is a really good question and there is unfortunately not a really good comprehensive resource available uh there is a book called creating wildlife habitat um and for unfortunately I’m traveling so I can’t just like turn around and pull it off my bookshelf I’m pretty sure it’s called creating
Wildlife habitat and they talk about um how wood and snags and that that decomposing structure uh creates space for amphibians to to overwinter um so check out that book do you know the author I don’t um but I can message you after I’m back home and and I get
Sent out but overall understanding that that in the environment where most of the amphibians are going is either in the Northeast they’re either going to be over wintering in water so you need deep water environments with um Leaf litter at the bottom or they’re going to be
Trying to find um wet areas that aren’t going to freeze and that includes decomposing trees that includes rocks caves and crevices so each species is going to be a little bit different your um spring peepers and uh wood frogs those are surprisingly able to freeze so
Those are the ones are going to show up first in the spring spring they’re the ones that start calling as soon as you have a warm day and there’s still snow on the ground uh so simply providing them with again loose organic material that they can move into and out of
Really easily is going to provide the best habitat without being specific to a research paper thank you um and Michelle asked who’s the author of the book bird houses that you recommended Sean I believe it’s the oton society um again I will how about I message you
Um Vinnie how about I message you like a list of books that I would recommend for creating creating those faes but yeah the uh the birdh house book I think it’s out by aabon and it has amazing designs like how to how to create everything so I’ll I’ll make sure to send that
Over also have you looked at the DNR website because that also has like by diff bird type they have have list of bird houses and different designs with like the key requirements of like the hole and what height it should be planted at and and what what have you um
I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that resource um to you know Pro public yeah that is also a great resource um last I checked it just wasn’t it didn’t have as many species as the book did but they might be copying each other now and integrating so
All right so I’m going to open it up uh to the the rest of the group see if there are any additional questions and you don’t have to unmute if you you’re more comfortable just typing it out in the chat um I’m happy to kind of read it loud for on your
Behalf and if there are no questions I’m happy to close out early and give you 8 or 9 minutes minutes back in your day this is Betty can you hear me hi Betty hi Sean and I just wanted to um follow up I did ask about the amphibians I am just so
Thankful that you gave me a way to look at smaller areas and not get overwhelmed and I I do have a a variety on a Halfacre a lot and so I am I am more enthused with just being able to say I can do a variety of things in smaller
Places and not get overwhelmed and the idea of going under the ground with what you did in your garden with the rocks and stuff oh my gosh just highlight for me but thank you so many ideas thank you thank you thank you Betty we have one more questions our
Toad house is worth looking into Toad Houses are really good for summer shelter um the thing to understand about toad toab boods if you will uh those come from the UK so they’re dealing with a very different environment and a lot less sunny days so
If you put up a toad of boad I recommend covering it with mulch or making sure that it’s in a very shaded area they should never be exposed to um direct sunlight similarly if you want to attract tree frogs to your yard they love PVC pipe
And the way that most uh like tree frog researchers go and Sample the wild is they put up PVC pipes in shaded areas where it’s wet and then they just go and look inside and you’ll find all the tree frogs hanging out in there so if you
Have any of the tree frogs in your yard that you just want to check on them like put a white PVC pipe somewhere that you’re going to access it’s not going to hit with direct sunlight and you can just look in and see your your little buddy hanging out it’s kind of awesome
But yes total boats do it put them in damp areas shaded areas do not let Sun hit them and again it’s just that pretty much it’s the above ground shelter that I showed in this talk just using a terra cotta pot for the easiest thing but you
Can make it with all sorts of material as long as there’s enough space for them to crawl under and stay damp hi uh my name is Rica I have a question about out the leave litter that you were talking about and I have have big areas in the yard with like very
Mature trees so I leave all the leads down there but I did plan a few spring epals this year so would those be okay or should I still disturb the leaves a little did you say spring ephemerals yes yes so um a lot of your spring ephemerals can grow through like a loose
Leaf litter or a thin Leaf layer but if the leaves are where you planted them if they’re naturally just building up there or if the leaves are just too too dense just in the the late winter clear those leaves away a little bit so that the
Soil is seen in pockets and the emerals will find that light and then grow up above them does that apply okay great and does that apply to ferns too ferns typically are pretty strong Growers and they’ll grow through thick uh leav flers um the only one that I think that
Won’t do that is ha scented Fern but if you have any of the large osas they’ll do they’ll do pretty good in big Le players awesome thank you so much great talk I have a question Sean if I may sure um so we have in our backyard we
Have this large Wisteria Forest again that’s a it’s an invasive and we’re we’re working actively to get rid of it but the the massiveness of this Mysteria Forest is is what worries me a little bit if I’m kind of killing the habitat as I’m taking out the invasive so this
Fall um we did like blanket spray on with you know you know gly glyphosate um and again you know that was kind of intentional because we’ve been working on it for seven years without making a single dent in how widespread this was serious and I’m talking like they’re
Really thick trun like they’re 6 in to like sometimes even a foot um wide I mean it’s like a 50-year-old old growth like that’s no one’s been taken care of so we decided to do that and I’m like seeing all this large swath of like dead you know Wisteria Trunks and branches
And I was a little worried that I’m kind of destroying some of the habitat that probably some of this Wildlife like birds that don’t necessarily eat the berries but are using that as shelter to kind of you know to build their nest and and what have you so in that in that
Process where people are kind of taking out invasives in and eventually I will add something in that transition mode is there any that I can do to help the wildlife kind of adjust um in you know in this phas yeah um so the rough answer is the majority of animals that we using
That wisteria are not going there’s nothing you can do to make their life easier but that’s okay because the natural processes are supposed to be rough naturally like there um it’s kind of mean to think about but the reality of nature is there is no kind death in nature and there’s no
Kind transition for a lot of things so accept that and be okay with the disturbance that you’re doing that said there are a number of things you can do to kind of expedite the Next Step that should be happening which if you’re allowing a lot of sunlight to hit the forest floor plant
Sunflowers it’s going to help suppress invasive species it’s going to provide a lot of butterflies with uh a host plant because I think seven species use sunflowers a number of bees utilize it as pollen and a number of birds eat the seeds so that’s just going to be just a
Fabulous planet to put in the ground and it grows in three months you know like you get to see that change um try and bring like pick small areas especially on the the periphery of where that Wisteria damage is happening that you start doing your transplants too so bring in the
Plants that you want to see growing there and then make sure that you are actively preventing any new invasive species from growing there or any new Vines from popping up and then you can kind of just concentrically move in to the center of the the worst part of that uh
Wisteria area um um however if you use glyphosate it’s not like you burned anything or anything so anything that’s like using the wood or platform to grow on or nesting in that structure they’re going to be fine uh you can also put Vines native Vines that’ll grow over
That wood as well to kind of bring back the shelter that would have been there but think of it as what you’re doing is a is a forest fire going through and yeah the animals are going to come back and that habitat isn’t there so they have to find it somewhere else landscape
And the goal is to allow there to be habitat for these organisms so it’s okay to be in the cycle and not necessarily have that perfect habitat that you want that you’re aiming for that was very helpful because I was really stressing out if I’m destroying a
Whole bunch of things in this my effort to remove invasives from the backyard thank you so much um do we have any more questions and we’re cutting close to 7:30 so if there are any more questions again you have Sean’s email um and feel
Free to reach out to either him or or or us one of any one of our Wild Ones use um The Wild Ones Baltimore um Gmail email address to send us any questions um and we will send out um a presentation uh and the book recommendations from Sean and u a
Recording so you’ll have all of this information available for you to again you know kind of review whatever you missed or if you want to just relisten to all the good points he had in the presentation so thank you Sean it was quite a treat as I anticipated and not
Surprised at all um a lot of information a lot of enrichment for me to take back home and hope it’s this applies to all of the people that attended in the meeting today um and thank you so much we hope to have you again uh on one of
The other subjects CU this was such a so inspiring awesome yeah please anytime I will make it happen even if I’m presenting from a hotel in [Laughter] Texas