Wildlife-Friendly Landscape Design From Scratch

How to craft a landscape design that benefits wildlife, from blank slate to thriving habitat

By Amy McCullough
Habitat Gardening
Dec 18, 2024

Benjamin Vogt of the firm Monarch Gardens oversaw a full-scale residential landscape renovation in Omaha, Nebraska, from bare ground (above) to 100 percent native flora (below).

A BLANK SLATE CAN BE DAUNTING. Ask any writer, composer—or gardener. Yes, gardeners, too, are faced with projects that require thinking from the ground up, literally, which can cause a sense of paralysis. Take it from Rebecca Saltsman, who recently bought a home in Los Angeles: “I have this great outdoor space now, but it’s so overwhelming. I don’t even know where to start.”

The prospect of taking on a full-scale landscape renovation—or “gardening from scratch”—can be especially intimidating for gardeners who want to help the planet. You want your site to be water wise, climate resilient and beneficial to native wildlife, but also enjoyable to look at and spend time in. To crack the code, we asked a few experts to weigh in with their advice for assessing outdoor areas and making the most of them with an eye toward the future.

First, they say, you need to learn your ecological address. “Knowing the ecoregion gives you an idea of what the native community is, and thus what plants will thrive and form beneficial relationships to support the health of your wildlife garden,” says plant ecologist and author Susan J. Tweit. To get started, Mary Phillips, head of Native Plant Habitat Impact & Certifications for the National Wildlife Federation, recommends NWF’s free online resource categorizing keystone native plants by their ecoregion.

An image of residential landscape renovation two years post planting.

What lies beneath

Before selecting plants, however, you must get to know your soil and test it. “You need to know what is and was growing on the site, the existing state of soils and what would have grown there in its most biodiverse condition,” says John Hart Asher, senior environmental designer and principal at the consulting group Blackland Collaborative and host of the public television program “Central Texas Gardener.”

A soil test should include chemical and textural analysis, as well as nutrient levels, conductivity and organic matter. “Many urban sites will have a hodgepodge of material that in no way resembles what historically was present,” he says. You need to know your soil composition before making decisions about potential amendments. It’s also important to scrutinize the soil for toxins, such as lead, arsenic or other heavy metals, especially if you’re planning to grow food.

Recognize your soil might not need that much help. “Many people believe that they need to overhaul their soils so they resemble gardens,” Asher says. “That is absolutely not the case, as many native plant communities evolved in what are considered poor soils.” Clay isn’t a problem if it’s native to your site, for instance. “Ecologists don’t hate clay; engineers and architects do,” he observes.

Tweit agrees: “If the plants truly are native to the area, they evolved with that soil and its ecosystem of microbes, fungi, lichens and mosses.” Soil amendments such as peat moss or inorganic materials like perlite “can actually work against planting success by introducing soil flora and fauna that native plants do not ‘know’—meaning have relationships with,” she says.

It’s important to remember that healthy soil, if viewed under a microscope, would show almost 50 percent void space, explains Asher, which allows for root respiration and water intake. He recommends adding 1 to 2 inches of compost over the entire site and emphatically warns against deep tilling. “By overtilling, you will pull up more invasive seed bank into the soil and cause yourself much more heartache.”

Indeed, at any site, invasive species must be dealt with as soon as possible. If you had invasives growing on the property prior to your restoration, the soil may contain roots and a cache of dormant seeds that could have been building for decades. If you’re rethinking a home landscape, you may also have to tackle turfgrass removal. Tweit recommends layering cardboard three deep on top of turf and leaving it for a few months, noting, “This smothers the grass without killing the soil organisms,” as plastic would do. Only nonchemically treated, plain cardboard should be used in such cases, Phillips adds.

Be thorough. “Species like Bermuda grass can regenerate from the smallest fragments of root, stolon or seed,” cautions Asher. “If you don’t remove the invasive plant material and install a diverse plant community, you might not notice the invasives starting to creep back in until it is too late, and then you are left with compromised habitat.”

An image of soil before and after amendment with compost.

Planning is essential before putting plants in the ground. Among the first steps: getting to know and testing your soil (above). A soil test should include chemical and textural analysis, as well as nutrient levels, conductivity and organic matter. You need to know your soil’s composition before deciding on potential amendments.

Waiting and watching

The next step—challenging for many eager gardeners—is simply to wait and watch before taking any action. “You need to take adequate time to prepare your site,” says Asher. How long is adequate? Most experts say a year. While that may sound excruciating, there will be plenty to observe and learn from: Watch the way sunlight reaches different portions of your site across every season. Observe how water drains or stands depending on average rainfall versus extreme weather, such as flood or drought. Assess whether drainage improvements are needed. “If you have time and patience, the land will teach you,” Tweit says. Garden educator Liz Cardinal, owner of Austin Edible Gardens, agrees that waiting and watching provides the opportunity to “see how the site differs from season to season and plan the garden accordingly.”

Once it’s time to think about planting, continue to move slowly and carefully. Use a pencil and paper to sketch out a plan of what goes where. Once you have something you like, consider nontoxic landscape spray paint—the kind used to make lines on athletic fields—to draw your design, including plant placement, on the ground. “That way you can walk around the various elements, look at them at different angles and see the design in real life, or at least actual size,” Tweit explains. “If you find a line or plant outline is in the wrong place, it can be erased with the toe of a boot and redrawn. Drawing on the land, you can factor in things like how far a tree will spread in time and actually see how it will affect plantings underneath and nearby. It’s a very tactile way to plan a garden.”

If you’re a database person, make up a spreadsheet with typical plant height and spread, sun-exposure and water preferences, incompatible plant species, bloom time, microclimate and other details. Also, consider hardscape elements and garden structure. Tweit likes local rocks for adding character to a garden, “whether local sandstone slabs for patios, chunky rocks for edging and borders and walls, or larger boulders or monoliths for benches, watering basins for wildlife and sculptural elements.” Get creative!

It’s also important to observe the way sunlight reaches different portions of your site throughout the day and across every season. That will help determine precisely where shade- or sun-loving plants (such as butterfly weed, above) will be able to thrive.

Starting small

When selecting your plants, make sure to keep it simple. Cardinal advises picking groups of three to five species and choosing plants that are native or adapted to your area. “This will automatically limit your choices and hopefully increase the likelihood of the plants thriving in the garden,” she says. “And because the local fauna has evolved with these plants, they will attract native wildlife to the garden as well.” Phillips says wildlife gardeners should aim for 70 percent native plants, a goal that NWF’s affiliated plant company can help you achieve.

Asher agrees with starting small, noting that you can increase diversity over time. “Start with a simple mix of only a handful of species so you can get to know them and identify and deal with weeds during the first season or two,” he says.

To fine-tune plant selection, think in layers. “Find places to add tall, deciduous trees. Then add in understory trees and shrubs, then grasses and perennials,” Cardinal says. “Once these areas are defined, start to narrow in on bloom time, leaf texture, shape and then flower color.” It’s also important to consider which plants get along: Cedar sage, for instance, doesn’t do well under deciduous trees with large leaf litter, while certain plants might hog water from others, attract undesirable pests or steal valuable nutrients.

Once you put your carefully selected plants in the ground, immediately water them—wisely. Asher acknowledges the need to be smart about water as a resource, but he also sees “the pendulum swinging too far to the other side.” Establishing healthy landscapes will require water, especially in their infancy. “We need to understand that it’s OK to allocate this resource in a smart way that benefits all species,” he says, “to give back to so many plant and animal species that have historically been pushed to the brink by people.” As an added incentive, many communities offer rebates for rain barrels, making efficiency easier.

An image of Allium cernuum and Carex pensylvanica plugs.

Before installation, consider setting your plants out on the ground (above) using a design previously sketched out on paper (below). Experts suggest picking groups of three to five species of plants that are native or adapted to your area.

Embrace change

For successful wildlife gardening from scratch, realize your actions are merely a beginning. “Restoration is a trajectory, not an intervention,” Asher says. “You are starting a process and then working with that landscape to help ensure it evolves properly over time to meet your habitat goals.”

He also notes that the beauty of native plant communities is that many are disturbance-driven ecosystems. “This means they evolved with fire, grazing, tornadoes, storms, burrowing, floods, et cetera,” he says. “Your habitat wants you to get in there and shake things up. It will actually require you to interact so things don’t become static, resulting in a loss of diversity.”

That means you must embrace change. Our gardens are part of nature, which is ongoing. As Asher puts it, “There is no blank slate unless a volcano erupted on your site a few days prior to your restoration actions.” But even then, there would be the volcano and what came before.

Gardening is indeed “a long, slow process,” says Cardinal, “but it’s always changing, and that’s exciting. I’m not in it for the finished outcome. The garden teaches us to slow down, and that is a wonderful thing.”

Amy McCullough is a writer, editor and native plant enthusiast based in Austin, Texas.