The Woodland Native Habitat Garden serves as a teaching area to demonstrate how native plants are a source of food and shelter for wildlife.
Woodland Native Habitat
The Woodland Native Habitat Garden serves as a teaching area to demonstrate how native plants are a source of food and shelter for wildlife.
Conceived in the late 1990's to demonstrate Backyard Habitat Gardening, as promoted by the National Wildlife Federation, the Woodland Native Habitat Garden became affectionately known as the wildlife area to our Master Gardeners. It is a teaching area that consists of 90% native plants and landscape elements selected for their use to wildlife as a source of food, water, and shelter.
Classes taught there include proper pruning, hardscape construction, growing native plants, using natives in your landscape, backyard habitat, gardening to attract pollinators, weed identification, starting, and managing a meadow, and landscape design.
Portions of the area are used for pollinator research, and, of course, simply as a place to unwind and enjoy nature. The area was fenced off from the horse pasture in the fall of 2002 and slowly planted and added as annual funding and grant monies became available. In 2024, the Tranquility Garden, a small area and pathway, was added near the stream.
Master Gardeners are grateful to the Alexander Stewart Foundation for the initial grant funding the project. The pergola was installed in 2006 as a gift of money and labor from the local George Washington Masonic Lodge #143. The pillars were rescued from the old Ag Building when it was torn down and replaced with the new Ag Heritage Center.
