EcoSuperior Environmental Programs

The Wildlife Gardener

By: John V. Dennis

From the author of A Complete Guide to Bird Feeding, here is a charming and unusual gardening book for people who enjoy playing host to wildlife and who consider a garden the perfect setting for observing nature.  John Dennis explains how a cultivated garden can surpass natural habitats in its capacity to hold and support some wildlife populations, and he shows how to create such a garden -- whether it be on a city rooftop, a half acre, or ten.

In John Dennis's wildlife garden, there is as much emphasis on good landscaping as in more formal gardens, but plants are selected primarily for their foodbearing, shelter-giving properties, and the effect may be more naturalistic, less manicured.  Dennis shows how great are the rewards and gratifying the results of such a project: not only can we see creatures close up, but a beneficial natural balance should take over.  Pests are kept under control (the purple martin, for example, preys upon the mosquito population) without the need for chemical poisons.  We have the pleasure of helping maintain a small ecosystem that is also an attractive garden, and we learn to appreciate some creatures -- such as skunks or bats -- whose virtues for the gardener we may have previously ignored.

The author gives tips on everything from encouraging earthworms to composting to creating a lily pond, and he enlivens his instruction with anecdotes about his own garden and lore about the life and behavior of his many wild visitors.  We learn just which flowers attract which butterflies or bees, which berries will draw which birds -- and what we have to do to keep the creatures coming back year after year.

The Wildlife Gardener is a delightfl book for both gardeners and amateur naturalists.