A Native Garden

A couple of years ago, my family and I moved to Sonoma County, home to some of my favorite wildlife. It was exciting, stressful, and joyful, all at once, but among everything we had to be grateful for, a garden of our own ranked pretty highly. There was just one problem.

The "garden" was a dirt lot; dry, rock-hard adobe clay, broken only by a handful of stubborn weeds.

There was a lot of work ahead of us, but we started with a few simple principles. We wanted somewhere to relax, a space for our son, Gavin, to play, and native plants — exclusively.

The reason for natives is fairly simple. They're suited to our climate, so they need less water when established, and they support the insects, birds, and other animals that evolved alongside them. The more I thought about that second part, the more excited I got.

The chance to photograph wildlife, however small, right on my doorstep, was motivation to make it work, but I had to admit that I couldn't do the heavy lifting alone.

Over the next few months, a landscaper helped bring some structure to the space. I’ve made some mistakes already, and I'm sure more will reveal themselves in time, but at some point you just have to start, and learn as you go.

I visited a few nurseries, and picked out a selection of natives that I hoped could handle our heavy clay soil. Finally, it was time to plant.

While I made a few concessions along the way: a patch of synthetic turf for play, and some citrus trees in pots, everything in the ground was native, and as luck would have it, our city was running a tree giveaway and we were the grateful recipients of a Catalina Cherry.

Our space was taking shape, and even before anything flourished, the progress felt like a success. And then, slowly, the wildlife started to arrive.

The first to show up were western fence lizards; small, sun-loving, and easy to overlook. I'd seen these lizards a hundred times before, but usually in isolation. Now that I had the chance to spend more time with them, I noticed they weren't sunning themselves alone. They were interacting. Chasing each other and posturing. This was the first time I'd witnessed their social life.

Then came the pollinators. Our new cherry tree turned out to be popular with western honey bees. It also became home to a female Johnson's jumping spider. She seemed deeply unimpressed by her neighbors. Around the garden, we spotted alfalfa loopers, anise swallowtails, umber skippers, West Coast ladies, cabbage whites, and a stunning gray hairstreak. I was surprised by the variety.

Some nights, lying in bed, I'd hear our neighborhood great horned owl. A reminder that even when nothing was visible, the garden was busy. Various rodents showed up on the trail cam, which I suppose was inevitable. I was delighted, though, when it also caught a family of raccoons passing through. And then, later, a beautiful gray fox.

Over the summer, the garden continued to grow while we took a trip to Scotland. We returned to find our garden had welcomed travelers of its own. The first was a European mantis. The second was a Mediterranean katydid.

By fall and winter, we were grateful for the rain, even if it meant fewer days outside. I'd noticed that birds didn't spend much time in the yard yet, though I could hear them all around. The Cornell Lab's Merlin app taught me how many species were active in the area. So, with spring in mind, Gavin and I built a birdhouse together, stained it, and hung it up.

When spring came, the birdhouse sat empty. I worried it was mounted too low to the ground. As it turned out, it was too high. Below, in a clump of sage, a pair of dark-eyed juncos began building a nest of their own. We started paying close attention, and during one opportune moment, before incubation started, I caught a quick glimpse of three tiny eggs.

Soon enough, the male began rushing back and forth to feed the female. When we started seeing them both, we knew the eggs must have hatched. Both parents were suddenly relentless. One would land on the fence, scan the area, and once it seemed safe, drop down to the nest, deliver food, and disappear again. Over and over, from dawn until dusk. I was exhausted just watching them. I managed a few glimpses of the chicks with a long lens. There were three of them, packed in tight.

Then, one afternoon, danger arrived in the form of a Pacific gopher snake. For us, there was nothing to fear, and as mice sometimes found their way into our walls, I was glad to have a predator on the premises as well as a new subject to photograph. For the juncos, however, the calculation was rather different. Gopher snakes will occasionally eat eggs or nestlings, and this one showed no immediate signs of leaving.

For a full week, it remained in the garden, hiding beneath the turf, then emerging to hunt, bask, or sit for a portrait. The following Friday, I caught one last glimpse of it, moving deliberately across the driveway and disappearing into next door's yard. The juncos survived.

A few days later, the chicks fledged. It happened fast. I was lucky to be looking out the window at the right moment. They scattered across the yard and were over the fence within minutes. I only managed a couple of photos.

A year from when we started, the garden is still finding its shape. But the idea that set it all in motion, that if I built it, they would come, has proven true. Lizards, insects, a snake, mammals, and birds. But the fact that new life was born and raised here, just a few feet from our back door, was the ultimate payoff. I don't know exactly what next year will bring, but I'm looking forward to finding out.