Growing Habitat at Home: Tim Vendlinski’s Native Plant Garden

FOSC Board Member Tim Vendlinski started his native plant garden in 2015 and it has since provided food, shelter, and nesting sites for numerous bird species, including Bewick’s wrens, chickadees, towhees, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, jays, cedar waxwings, and more. His garden is also a haven for native bees, including sweat, leaf-cutter, carpenter, summer longhorn, and the beloved bumblebee. Tim’s trick to attracting so much wildlife is a simple one: plant native “keystone” plant species, and the birds and pollinators will find them.

In Tim’s garden, coffeeberry, toyon, and pink flowering currant provide hedge cover and berries for birds, as well as nectar for pollinators. Lupines, buckwheat, penstemon, ceanothus, sagebrush, tarweeds, and poppies provide nectar and pollen for bees, butterflies, and moths. California fuchsia attracts hummingbirds, while finches eat the seeds of buckwheat and native sunflowers in fall.

Tim also does something that readers may be less familiar with: he leaves the leaves of his native plants where they fall in his garden. Leaves he sweeps from his path are redistributed to the garden. Why is this so important? Because leaf layers provide shelter for many small creatures like California salamanders, while many butterfly and moth pupae overwinter among the leaves. Leaving the leaves in the garden provides these delightful species a safe home and place to grow.

–Kristy Brady, FOSC Board Vice President