An eco-friendly feast for the senses

Bringing your landscape to life

BY SANDRA STRIEBY

Awell-designed landscape is the perfect complement to any house, integrating it with its surroundings and providing comfortable, refreshing spaces for outdoor living.

While they delight your senses, carefully chosen plantings can also support the systems that keep the valley’s natural environment healthy.

Know Your Site

Deepening your understanding of your land will help you choose plants that beautify your surroundings, thrive where they’re planted, reduce wildfire risk, and contribute to environmental function. Temperature, soil type, precipitation and snow load can all affect plant choices. Each of those factors varies depending on latitude, altitude and other factors specific to each site.

Your general location in the valley can give you a broad-brush picture of climate characteristics as a guide to what will thrive.

On your land and around your house, look for micro-climates and habitats — sun and shade; swales where moisture will gather; the direction of the prevailing wind.

The more time you invest in observing and getting to know your home territory, the better equipped you’ll be to choose the right plant for each location.

Plan For Fire

In a wildfire hazard zone like the Methow Valley, it’s important to create defensible space around structures — including your house, outbuildings, decks and fences. Plant placement and species choices can reduce risk; so can keeping the landscape close to your house well irrigated.

Some of the plants that define the valley’s landscape can act as accelerants. The resins that make sagebrush, bitterbrush, ponderosa pine and snowbrush ceanothus aromatic also provide extra fuel for fire. They are super-flammable species that don’t belong close to or just downslope of your house.

See the Firewise article by the

Okanogan Conservation District on page 47 for more information on fire-adapted living.

Keep Deer In Mind

The Methow Valley is home to

Washington state’s largest migratory mule deer population. Deer move with the seasons and relocate in the course of each day as they seek food, water and shelter. Leaving travel corridors open helps support a healthy population. Deer bring beauty, mystery and wildness to the land outside our doors. They can also damage and destroy plants, especially young ones. Some plants are less palatable than others, but few if any species are truly deer-proof.

Newly-planted shrubs, perennials and grasses, and trees under 4 feet tall, are likely to need protection. You can find valuable information about living with deer at https:// wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/ living/species-facts/deer#; click “Preventing Conflicts” for detailed instructions on creating fences and temporary enclosures to protect plants while they become established.

Choose Native Plants

Native plants are adapted to local conditions, and many will thrive with little or no supplemental water once they’ve become established. They also support native bees, butterflies, birds, and other valuable insects and wildlife, which help keep our ecosystems intact and functional. As natural landscapes become more fragmented in the face of climate change, drought and wildfire, the contributions of cultivated lands are increasingly critical to maintaining diverse populations of plants and the life they support. To create a landscape that combines beauty and ecological value, consider choosing plants that will provide:

• Steady bloom from spring through fall. Flowers provide pollen that’s collected by native bees, and nectar to feed bees, butterflies, moths and hummingbirds. And they feed dozens of other beneficial insects that help control pest populations. Keeping flowers blooming in your garden ensures a steady supply of food for wild pollinators.

• Fruit and seeds as long as possible. Wild birds and mammals depend on berries and other wild fruit. Fruit and seeds that stay on the plant through the winter are a boon to birds and small mammals.

• Shelter. Plants give birds, insects and small mammals places to rest, nest and hide.

• Host plants that feed insect larvae. Caterpillars may chew some leaves, but they are also food for baby birds, and will become butterflies and moths later in the season.