Archive for November 28th, 2008

What is a Wildscape?

Friday, November 28th, 2008

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

A highly manicured landscape may attract the praise of neighbors, but it won’t attract much native wildlife. To do that, you need a wildscape.

Essentially, wildscaping is creating your landscape in a way that’s going to be friendly to wildlife.

Mark Klym is with wildlife diversity at Texas Parks and Wildlife.

So, we’re looking at providing food, shelter and water for the wildlife on the space that you have available using native plants. We ask for at least fifty-one percent native plants. And creating a habitat they feel comfortable with, while at the same time, keeping it comfortable for yourself and your neighbors.

For example, creating a wildlife attracting brush pile in your yard may seem a bit unruly for your tidy suburban neighborhood, but if done right, it can satisfy both man and beast.

Well, a brush pile is a wonderful thing for the wildlife to have. And if it’s properly done, it can be a very pleasing thing for us, especially when you start getting some of the field sparrows that we don’t normally see around our gardens, coming into our garden because of that brush pile. These are a wonderful resource. I’ve seen them in downtown Corpus Christi in a way that the neighbors wouldn’t even know they were there unless they looked for them.

We have links to wildscape information at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show for today …For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.