Here’s a way to achieve a few things in your nature garden, when you’re depending on products you can buy at the store. Boulders from a landscaper would be great, but a lot of us can’t afford them, and the labor to have them delivered and placed. This type of concrete paver is made to look like a natural flagstone, and it’s not too heavy for a woman to pick up and carry across the yard. What I’ve done is lay them on top of blocks standing about four inches high. This mimics a rock shelf of the forest, and the space underneath the pavers gives shelter to (with luck), some of the small snakes that are good garden citizens, or a toad or two. Because the ledge provides shelter, it has some power to discourage rabbits, who don’t trust spots a predator might lurk. The elevation of the pavers casts a shadow to about a foot beyond their edge, which helps retain water.  The roots of the cryptomeria above are protected; many shrubs will thrive better with root cover.  If you create a ledge like this on a slope, you also slow down erosion and the flow of water. And you can put summer containers on top. 

 

 

I’ve lived at my house fourteen years. One of the neighbors has a weeping willow tree. But this drought year was the first time I saw willows sprouting up all over my yard. I think I had seven or eight places where I found them. At first, they looked like perennials of some kind, but as the summer progressed, the stems got woody. I’ve pulled them all out. The stems were shallow-rooted, so I’m not sure they didn’t come from seeds. But I think their spreading in the summer of 2024 was definitely a response to lack of rain stress.

 

 

This is my little pond when I first put it in, a couple of years ago. Everything is so tidy. Nice little carex, Bleeding Hearts heliopsis, and a few sages. Once the wildlife started in on my pond, the plants got eaten and torn up, and I changed them for hardier things that could take all the traffic. I also put in a couple of those same pavers as protective stones, to shelter the goldfish I have living in there. This past summer, I had a frog that kept getting bigger and bigger, so I think it was a bullfrog. I doubt tadpoles could survive, because of the fish, but the fish is a natural mosquito control. I usually have to add two to four gallons of water to this tub every day. That’s a good measure of how important even a small water feature can be to local wildlife. They know it’s here, and they need a reliable source of water, even when it rains like it ought to.