Instead of reaching for your keys and going out to a restaurant and movie, eat at home and spend some time enjoying your landscape, your open space. I often find myself daydreaming about my open space, a water feature here, a pine needle path over there. Daydreams are great ways to begin brainstorming but reality has a way of interfering with the process.
Daydreams do manifest themselves into landscape projects. In order to maximize your creativity you need to step back and survey your existing landscape. Identify the different habitats that make up your outdoor space. Are they natural or manually landscaped? Native plants are desirable because of their hardiness and adaptability. Exotics also have their place as they can add color and dollar value to your landscape. Some exotic palm trees can be $5,000.00 plus, but we will leave that for another day.
Your existing landscape (vegetation) also provides food and shelter for wildlife. Make a sketch of your open space and where you have noticed butterflies, snakes, squirrels, birds, raccoons, opossums, rabbits. This may involve going outside in the evening with a spotlight to see the last group of wildlife. Note, look for little beady eyes.
One thing I do is to go for walks and look at different parts of my community and its landscapes. Once you identify your plants in your open space you can begin identifying them in other locations and in different stages of growth. I often take note of how the plant flowers, how the plant provides food or shelter, how it responds to water, drought, and the humans with Felcos.
At this point if you are so inclined you can augment your existing landscape to increase your wildlife population. If you get your neighbors on board your natural areas can be adjacent to one another increasing the overall habitat area. Providing a clean water source and diverse food sources can really increase your viewing pleasure as well. The starting point of learning your vegetation and wildlife will allow you to make decisions about which plants to remove and what to add and where to put that water feature. So go forward and identify.
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