SCWF staff, volunteers, and community partners joined together at the new SCWF office in downtown Columbia to install a habitat garden in honor of Garden for Wildlife™ Month! Part of our mission is to restore wildlife habitat in order to help maintain healthy ecosystems for all plants, animals, and humans. By doing this, we promote biodiversity and ensure that future generations get to experience all the wonders that nature has to offer. Pollinators are one of those tiny wonders – small, yet mighty machines that keep our ecosystems running, and one way we can all help them is by planting native plants.

Before planting

What were once bare beds of mulch are now areas of refuge for wildlife to thrive. The native plants in the garden include fruit-producing blueberry bushes, blue false indigo, yarrow, common boneset, and Homestead Purple verbena. Other plants like Eastern red columbine, moonbeam coreopsis, and Stokes aster now sit under the towering willow oak tree that offers a shade and cover birds and other wildlife. These native plants will provide a source of food for pollinator insects like butterflies, bees, and beetles, which will in turn provide food for many of the bird species that have been sighted at the office like Mississippi kites and American redstarts. Butterfly weed, swamp milkweed, and common milkweed were also planted to help declining monarch butterflies.

This new habitat garden will become a Certified Wildlife Habitat and will provide the essential elements for wildlife to thrive – food, water, cover, and places for wildlife to raise their young. Learn how you can certify your garden below!

All plants were provided by Wingard’s Market, Mill Creek Greenhouses, and Irmo Middle School. See a list of more native plants here. You can also order native plants online and have them shipped straight to your door!

Thank you to Goodrichland Property, LLC for supporting our habitat garden on this property!