Convert part of your lawn to a pollinator meadow. Most wildflowers thrive in a sunny habitat so choose your site carefully. The Massachusetts Audubon Society provides some useful advice on how to create a pollinator meadow successfully and beautify your landscape, while supporting birds, bees, butterflies, and beneficial invertebrates.

Create a beautiful border next to your house and/or around the base of a tree with perennials and native shrubs. It is important not to mow too close to the base of a tree because many moths and other insects overwinter in the soil at the base of a tree. Remember that those insects are essential for wildlife including birds, all of which need caterpillars to feed their young even if the adult birds are seed eaters. So planting low growing native shrubs and perennials provides beauty as well as function. 

Plant a tree. If you have space, oak trees are the best ones for supporting wildlife as they are host to hundreds of different insect species, which in turn supply food for birds. If you only have a small area, a good choice might be an amelanchier, also known as serviceberry or shadbush, which has flowers in the spring and berries that birds adore, or a native dogwood. Non-native trees, such as a Japanese maple or a gingko, don’t provide the same essential support for wildlife.

Leave the leaves. It has become customary to rake all the leaves from the landscape each fall and send them somewhere else. Doing so prevents the nutrients from enriching the soil. Instead, remove leaves from your lawn and driveway but leave them in mulched areas. In fact, shredded leaves make great mulch that is better for the soil than bark mulch and, if you shred them yourself, will save you money. Also, shredded leaves will not smother plants as can happen with a thick layer of entire leaves.

Invasive Plant Management. One of the most pressing issues our landscapes and ecosystems face is the ever-expanding growth of invasive plants. Invasive plants form mono cultures in our ecosystems, choking out and threatening the diversity of our native plant life. As a result this has a detrimental impact on the biodiversity of life our landscapes can support. 

Rain Gardens. Water that simply runs off your hardscape is wasted water. Rain gardens are areas that collect and store runoff where it can sink into the ground. They play an important role in our landscapes, helping to store and clean nature’s most precious resource.

Lawn Alternatives. There is a place for lawn in a landscape, but explore alternatives that require less maintenance and that are more ecologically beneficial than species such as Kentucky bluegrass (which is native to Europe and is poorly adapted to conditions in North America). Examples include Pennsylvania sedge, rupture wort (Herniaria glabra) or a micro-clover fescue mix. These lawn alternatives require minimal watering once established and infrequent to no mowing.