DC Backyard Habitat-Native plant landscaping workshop

Yesterday I went to a DC Department of Environment workshop on backyard habitats, native plant landscaping. It was very good. A lot of information on why native plants are superior in terms of providing food and cover for native insects and wildlife. We planted some in demonstration plots at the Girard Street Park in Columbia Heights, and even got to take some plants home.

There should be one more program in October, although it isn't listed on the schedule on the webpage for the backyard habitat program. There is contact info listed at the end of the screen.

Another backyard habitat program is sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, and Takoma Park Maryland is very active with it as is Rockville. There are two levels of certification, the individual household and the community. See "Rockville needs 60 more residences to be certified as Community Wildlife Habitat" and "Takoma Park certified as community wildlife habitat" from the Gazette.

-- What Does it Take to Become a Certified Community Wildlife Habitat Like Takoma Park, Maryland?, National Wildlife Federation

-- "Making a Habit of Habitat," NWF

One of the items we received was a copy of the manual, Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat & Conservation Landscaping: Chesapeake Bay Watershed, published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I don't know if they publish similar manuals for other parts of the U.S. It's a great guidebook for identifying plants, e.g., in our backyard we have some variants of asters (I think), the white snakeroot and the (purple) mistflower.

The first year we were here--they don't flower til October--I thought they were weeds, and pulled them. Then we learned while touring the grounds of Winterthur that they were "asters," native plants, which run rampant on the meadows there.