A huge thank you to Rick and Sandy for sharing their property with us. I could easily watch for an hour and more if you ever revisited! lol Their greenspace is a fantastic motivator for me to get to planting more and more natives to turn my suburban Southern Ontario property in to something similar albeit on a smaller scale (60 x 117) Thanks again!
Great variety of lovely native plants presented in a relaxed manner. Management by picking and choosing what to let and what to remove is a work of ongoing art. Each year is a new opportunity to create. Thx. A well created garden and video. The wildlife thanks you too.
One of the best things you can do to control feral cats and help the birds.... is to put up an Owl House. Seriously. Owls need homes, too, but so few people think about installing an Owl House on their land. Owls are the sworn enemies of cats and actively hunt the things. If you have feral cats, invite the owls in to dance with them and soon the cats will be gone. It's an amazing thing even if you never see it happen. Look for what owls are in your area and then see about putting in a Owl House or three.
This whole series about peoples' backyards in Georgia is fantastic! Where I live in central Illinois, I got reported to the city because I let a milkweed and a goldenrod grow in my yard. I have yard envy seeing all of these beautiful properties! Well done, Georgia folks! There are no oak trees near my property, and I did have a brood of chickadees fledge. My neighbor's free-range cat killed them almost immediately.
Thanks for your interest! Yes, the fall color is stunning; it too changes with time over the fall, similar to the progression of flowering plants. Unfortunately, no video.
The stake plates were labeled by a fellow Master Gardener and I actually don't know what she used. Interestingly, some of the plant labels look like they were done yesterday, and some, the printing is entirely gone. There is no relation to the labels' conditions and their sun exposure, so perhaps she used more than one marker.
Admittedly we have altered the natural ecosystem functions, just by living here, and as you say, feeding the birds and giving them nesting space. I don’t think, however, that we are changing the habitat or function of the Eastern grey squirrel at all, as they are so numerous in this and the adjoining area of the Southern Piedmont. Our birdfeeders are largely squirrel-proof; of course we have no control over their behavior at natural nests. Perhaps even our compost pile, where we include kitchen vegetables, such as peels, rinds, cores, stems, and such, attracts opossum and racoon. Racoons certainly can prey on bird eggs and unfledged birds. They also prey on squirrels. We saw that several years ago when first American crows, then a racoon, who climbed about 75 feet up a Northern red oak, raided a squirrel’s nest and preyed on the babies. Overall, though, I feel it is all a tradeoff, in which the ecosystem is a clear winner. Thank you for your comment.
