06/08/2026
Learned a lot from this article...
Two yards on the same street. One looks designed and finished. One looks a little wild around the edges.
The image shows what's different underneath — the number of caterpillar species each plant supports, and why that matters to the birds raising chicks next door.
🌿 The detail most people don't know: you don't need a hundred percent native to make a difference. Research suggests roughly seventy percent native plants is the tipping point where the yard starts sustaining birds on its own. The other thirty percent can be whatever you love.
One keystone tree — an oak, a native cherry, or a willow — does more for the food web than a full bed of ornamentals. A few feet of goldenrod, aster, and milkweed along the fence feeds caterpillars the lawn never could.
The designed yard and the native yard can be the same yard. The native section doesn't have to be big. It just has to be there.
The yard that feeds the neighborhood doesn't look empty. It looks lived in 🐾
