Sulphur Creek Nature Center’s Wildlife Habitat Garden
Hayward
1801 D Street, Hayward
Years gardened at this location: 20 years
Size: 1,700 square feet
Showcase feature: Certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation, this beautiful twenty-year-old wildlife habitat garden was developed to show how we can provide homes for wildlife in our own backyards. The garden contains nest boxes for birds and bumblebees, nest blocks for mason and leafcutter bees, log refugia for lizards and beetles, and a pond, stream, and butterfly puddling areas. Attractive as well as functional, it is inviting to both winged and land-dwelling creatures.
The worm bin converts the food scraps from the nature center’s animal kitchen to nutrient-rich garden amendments. (The worms also keep the toads, salamanders, fish, and crayfish on exhibit fat and sassy!)
Other garden attractions:
- Plants are divided into zones based on water needs.
- Inside the Wildlife Discovery Center is an exhibit profiling ways you can create a successful wildlife habitat in your yard
Gardening for Wildlife: A variety of native wildlife-friendly plants, including yampah, assorted grasses, milkweed, ceanothus, larkspur, salvia, coyote mint, buckeye, and buttercups offer their charms to foraging insects, amphibians, reptiles, and birds.
An 800 gallon pond with recirculating stream provides food, shelter and nesting areas for Pacific chorus frogs, dragonflies, damselflies, and other aquatic invertebrates. Butterfly puddling stations, sunning rocks, and a variety of native flowers attract mourning cloak, sara orange tip, western swallowtail, question mark, satyr, skippers, hairstreak, red admiral, painted lady, California sister, cabbage white, and yampah (anise) swallowtail butterflies.
Solitary native bees, bumblebees, and honeybees are attracted to the flowering plants in the bunchgrass and wildflower meadow. Wasps actively remove cutworms and other pesty grubs, and spiders are kept in balance by mud daubers and ground nesting wasps. Nest boxes, dust bath areas, seeds, and garden insects encourage visits from chicadees, goldfinches, Bewick's wrens, California and spotted towees, and stellar and scrub jays, among other species.