UWL Stick Dude

The easiest wildlife habitat you can build in your yard is a six foot wide strip of lawn you stop mowing. Pick the strip along the back fence or the useless corner. Mow around it, throw some logs and stones into it, add a brush pile, toss your fall leaves onto it, scatter native flower seeds intoit, and let God sort it out. Extra credit: watch what grows and yank any plants you can identify as non-native or invasive. Grass grows tall enough for skipper caterpillars to actually finish developing. Bumblebee queens can find protected ground and old burrows. Firefly larvae get damp litter instead of a mower passing overhead every week. Violets, asters, and fleabane get a chance to flower instead of being mowed within three inches of their lives. Taller vegetation and litter create shade near the soil, places to hide, stems to climb and overwinter in, flowers to feed from, seeds to eat, and cover for animals moving across the yard. Have grumpy neighbors? The trick is to make it look deliberate. Mow a clean border around it. Put it against a fence or tree line. Give it an obvious edge. Put up a cute "we're making wildlife habitat" type sign. Make it read like "this is supposed to be here" not "we forgot to mow." If you want to maintain it as an open patch rather than eventually letting shrubs take over, give it an occasional annual cut appropriate to your region and what grows there. Otherwise, leave it alone.