I have some neighbors I’ve never seen who live in a cute brick house set on a shaggy corner lot in fairly deep shade. These neighbors have a yard flag announcing that their lot is a Certified Wildlife Habitat. The flag has a drawing of a little raccoon wearing a Smokey the Bear type hat on it. I had to learn more. 

Wildlife habitat certification is one of the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife programs, serving as an environmental action initiative, an educational endeavor, and a fundraiser (there is a modest fee for the certificate itself, then an extra fee for a yard sign, flag, or plaque, and they will happily sell you things like nesting boxes or water features). The certificate includes one year of membership to the NWF, and of course they’ll accept additional donations. The central philosophy is that no outdoor space is too small to be useful to beneficial creatures, so you can certify even your front porch or apartment balcony. 

To get the official forestry raccoon yard sign, I filled out an online form with my personal information and verified that my yard provides the necessary elements of a wildlife habitat. You can download a helpful checklist with the requirements from the NWF. 

Information

The first tab of the online certification form asks for your name and email, the habitat type (Home, School, or Organization/Institute, and whether the area is a personal or hobby farm), and the habitat’s address. There is a field for a phone number, but I left it blank and the form did not complain when I clicked the Continue button.

Elements

There is a simple pair of Yes or No radio buttons for each of the elements required for certification. Certification works on the honor system because what kind of sociopath would lie to the Garden for Wildlife people.

Food

Does your habitat provide at least three (3) food sources for wildlife?
Y N

nwf.org

The menu at my house:

• Seeds from a plant: Cones from three enormous pine trees.
• Berries: Black raspberries (wild), three blueberry bushes, an indestructible American beautyberry and its offspring, viburnum, Carolina laurel cherry, two extremely mature Eastern red cedars.
• Nectar / pollen: Columbine, Stokes aster, lilies, daylilies, roses, liriope, sage, mint, clover, dandelions, abelia, Carolina laurel cherry, twisty old maple.
• Foliage: Ground ivy and deadnettle (rabbits), assorted host plants for butterflies (see more about host plants).

For extra credit, I bought a suet feeder and a box of suet cakes to help the birds out over the winter. However, by late spring, a marauding creature had learned to detach it from the chain and hide the empty feeder in various places in the yard overnight, so it’s currently not in use. Proposed engineering solutions are welcome.

Water

Does your habitat provide at least one (1) water source for wildlife?
Y N

nwf.org

The only habitat certification element my yard didn’t already have was a source of fresh water. For some reason it felt important to get something attractive to put water in, rather than just sticking a spare shallow dish full of water out in a flower bed (which totally would have counted), so I bought a proper bird bath. I started this project in late winter, so finding a bird bath took more doing than it otherwise might have done. 

I was somewhat concerned about the impact the bird bath might have on the yard’s mosquito population, but that was before I saw birds using it. There is no way water in a bird bath is stagnant enough to propagate mosquitoes; they splash enough out that I’m refilling it with a bucket every couple of days. 

Bonus: watching birds lose their minds in a bird bath is a daily joy I didn’t know I was missing.

Cover

Does your habitat provide at least two (2) sources of cover for wildlife?
Y N

nwf.org

The refuges (places for critters to take shelter from weather and predators): 

• Mature evergreen bushes (azalea, abelia, camellia).
• Ground cover (masses of vinca and English ivy).
• Compost pile.
• Significant piles of pre-compost leaf litter and pine straw mulch. 
• A wildly overgrown bramble patch in a brick-walled square that may have been the foundation of the house’s garage in the 1920s and ’30s. (I don’t promise to keep it a bramble patch forever.)

Places to raise young

Does your habitat provide at least two (2) places where wildlife can raise their young?
Y N

nwf.org

The accommodations (places friendly to a critter’s full reproductive cycle): 

• Six very large mature trees (two cedars, three pines, and a maple) and a number of smaller ones.
• Host plants for caterpillars. 
  • Sacrificial parsley that I plant in the spring on behalf of the caterpillars who turn into black swallowtail butterflies. It is not that much of a sacrifice, as I don’t particularly like parsley and it basically grows itself. 
  • A sweet bay that came up of its own free will by the compost tumbler and that can host eastern tiger swallowtails. 
  • Azaleas, for the gray comma butterfly. 
  • Redbuds and viburnum, for woodland elfin butterflies. 

Commitment to sustainable practices

Do you employ at least two (2) practices from the sustainable gardening categories?
Y N

nwf.org

Certification requires that you implement habits from at least two of the three categories of sustainable practices. I felt smug reporting that I use practices from all three categories, but I certainly do not use all the possible practices. 

1. Soil and Water Conservation
Y N
Examples: Limit water use, compost, mulch, reduce lawn and pavement, use soaker hose, install rain garden

I mulch (with the leaves and pine straw the trees make in abundance) and limit water use to minimal hand-watering when it fails to rain. I don’t have any space that one could fairly call a “lawn”; since taking residence, I have encouraged ground ivy, clover, and assorted deadnettle to replace the little grass there was, mostly by failing to take any action to keep the grass alive.  We’ve talked about my great enthusiasm for composting.

2. Controlling Invasive Exotic Species
Y N
Examples: Use native plants, Remove invasive exotic plants, Keep cats indoors

I have planted or encouraged (or just failed to kill) native plants and removed all the invasive runner bamboo above ground on my lot (the roots will be a work in progress for years to come). My cat, who is a mighty hunter, stays entirely indoors and only harms those creatures foolish enough to enter the house.

3. Organic Practices
Y N
Examples: Eliminate chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Attract beneficial insects

I generally let pests outdoors fight it out amongst themselves; there’s more stuff alive in any given cubic foot of yard than I can quite get my head around. Compost takes the place of fertilizer for everything except the roses, which get sprinkled with some organic fertilizer once a year if they’re lucky. The leaf litter, herbs, shrubs, and flowers all attract beneficial insects; this year I’m adding some native flowers back by the vegetable garden in an attempt to recruit more predatory bugs.

The payoff

The sign comes with no hardware whatsoever, so my father made a stake solution with weather-resistant screws.

Summary

Really the only things I needed to do to get certified were:

1. Identify the plants that were already in the yard.
2. Acquire and set up a bird bath.
3. Continue to be haphazard about my yard work. (Or, continue to let nature look natural.)

If you are also interested in identifying what (and who) all is in your yard, I have found the Seek app to be one of the most useful things I ever put on my phone. A joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, the app is both free and ad-free. (Hat tip to JM for bringing it to my attention.)

Reflections

Some of the most rewarding things about my house have been the slow lessons about what’s in the yard and how it all works together over the course of a year, as well as watching a rotating cast of animal friends pass through. 

While I may not have made many changes to my yard in the course of getting it certified, going through the checklist and the different elements prompted me to think through what the little piece of land I live on is for and about in a more coherent way than I may have done otherwise. 

I get a little self-conscious sometimes that my yard doesn’t look like magazine pictures or even like those of my neighbors who pay for their yard work. But my new sign is a good reminder that it is a relatively safe and healthy space for more living things than I will ever see. Even if my best efforts fall short, which they usually do, it is reassuring to think that the critters and I are both better off because of them.