Wildlife Garden

Enjoy a tranquil landscape that supports people and wildlife. 

The Blomquist Wildlife Garden is located adjacent to the main entrance to the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants. As a result of feedback from the general public, it was redesigned in 2022 as a more intimate “backyard” wildlife garden with the home gardener in mind.  There is a major difference in designing for a public garden such as Sarah P. Duke Gardens, where more than 700,000 visitors walk the paths each year, compared with designing for home gardens.

Wildlife gardens are becoming more popular with the general public, so the aim of this garden area is to help visitors, particularly those just starting out on their gardening journey, to create and build a garden which is also a habitat for wildlife.

Read on to learn more about this garden, written by Blomquist curator Annabel Renwick.

This is a garden that is designed and planted to support native wildlife. For most home gardens in North Carolina this means birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects.  It also can mean squirrels, racoons, rabbits, possums, groundhogs, pine voles, foxes, flying squirrels, as well as an array of reptiles and amphibians, and it may also mean deer unless the garden is fenced or chemical deterrents are used and choose plants that are least favored by the browsing deer.

In a wildlife garden, it is important to consider food (fruit, nuts, seed, leaves, pollen and nectar) available throughout the year, as well as water and shelter.  It is also a place for people to enjoy and be part of nature, so we need to consider seating areas and accessibility.

At the center of the Blomquist Wildlife Garden is a paved patio which is a gathering place for garden tours so a firm surface is required, but in a home garden the surface of the seating area could be less expensive gravel, grass or mulch.

Muddy areas are required for butterflies to drink, a term called puddling, but it is possible to have a plate with damp mud to help feed the butterflies in lieu of bare ground.  Salamanders like cool damp places, so it is important to supply this type of habitat which can be achieved with boulders in damp areas.  Boulders are also important for frogs, toads and small lizards such as skinks that also feed from insects.  In the Blomquist Wildlife Garden, we have used boulders forwalls holding back soil and also as seating.  These form important shelter for wildlife to live and reproduce.

A number of containers have been placed around the patio.  These contain a variety of plants from small trees to shrubs and herbaceous perennials and allows people who have a patio, deck or balcony to consider what they can grow to support wildlife as well as be attractive.  Shrubs and trees are the easiest to grow and maintain and least work; however, they do need watering during the heat of the summer and if they are sheltered from rain as on a balcony.

Creating planters with native perennial plants is more challenging but it is possible to have attractive plantings throughout the year.  There’s a wide range of Heuchera (coral bells) cultivars with colorful foliage that do well in containers.  We’ve had success growing pitcher plants (Sarracenia) in a shallow container; this planter has looked excellent for three years, even during the winter months. Yucca filamentosa ‘Colorguard’ has done extremely well in a container and makes for an excellent specimen year-round.  In my home garden I have grown the native wisteria (Wisteria frutescens cv. ‘Amethyst Falls’) and native clematis in containers.

A primary goal for the planting design for this backyard garden was to make the area aesthetically acceptable to many home owners, and to make it ‘readable’, which is a term used by landscape architects and designers to relate the landscape to people so that they recognize that this is a garden, and not a wild space. To aid this sense of formality, three vertical arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis cv. ‘Smaragd’) were included in the planting design; these small evergreen trees offer vertical structure, and are often found in domestic gardens.  

In addition, three metal obelisks were purchased to support native climbing plants such as the yellow flowered Carolina jasmine (Gelsemium sempervirens) which heralds the spring; a coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens cv. ‘Major Wheeler’). which flowers in early summer; and the climbing aster (Ampelaster carolinianus) which continues to flower into November, all of which support pollinators throughout the year.

The overall planting was chosen to create a garden that had a ‘cottage garden’ appeal, but instead of producing food for humans it produces food for wildlife.  In addition to the tag alder (Alnus serrulata) that was already growing in the garden, three deciduous understory trees were added: a green hawthorn (Crataegus viridis), a sweet crab apple (Malus coronaria) and a Florida dogwood (Cornus florida).  These offer nectar and pollen early in the year and the crab apple and hawthorn offers fruits into the winter.

Tag alder catkins (Alnus serrulata) in late winter in the Blomquist.

When many of us visualize a pollinator garden we often think of a mass of perennial flowers with blooms that billow in the breeze, but we shouldn’t forget that the native trees and shrubs in the garden have flowers that are rich with both pollen and nectar, as well as leaves for some of the small herbivores, these plants can bloom from late January to May.  The Ozark witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) is a shrub or small tree that blooms in late winter/early spring, when few other native plants are in flower. 

One of the challenges to the gardener in the south eastern US is that the blooms of herbaceous perennials do not last long during the long hot humid summers and warm nights. It is important to include perennials that grow successively throughout the seasons so that there is always food for the bees and other insects to forage.  It is possible to extend the flowering by cutting back some of the perennials just before they go to seed, these plants include the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), cut leaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata), woodland pink (Spigelia marilandica) and blue sage (Salvia azure).

Woodland pink (Spigelia marilandica) in the Blomquist.

The Blomquist Wildlife Garden was first planted in November 2022 and by the fall of 2025 there is data to support the choice of ‘best’ trees, shrubs and perennials to recommend that people grow in this region. Around 150 plant species, cultivars and hybrids have been grown in the garden and the following is a list of plants that work well for this space – we have rabbits and pine voles and sometimes we have light browsing by deer. 

This is not a scientific experiment with replication and randomization, but suggestions for homeowners to try out plants and see what works and what doesn’t.  The information also includes many species that happily grow elsewhere in the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants. Short-lived plants that may need to be replaced more often are marked with an asterisk.

• “Find A Plant” feature of the North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox allows gardeners to easily find the native species for their location.
•  For help identifying insects and other creatures visiting a wildlife garden, check out online crowdsourcing identification sites like iNaturalist and BugGuide.