Winter 2006

Table of Contents

Vine maple, a Pacific Northwest native tree. Photo by Jim Cummins

Sustainability includes your landscaping

The new buzz word “sustainability” usually conjures up visions of recycling, turning lights off, low-flow shower heads and other efforts to achieve its definition: meeting present needs without diminishing resources for future generations.

But your landscaping efforts in your Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary (BWS) can be sustainable, too.

Use of native, drought-tolerant plant species to provide food and cover for wildlife is a great way to save water and other resources. Since native plants are adapted to our natural environment in Washington, they will be a part of your landscape long after fussier exotics have withered away.

The landscaping that fronts the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) new regional office in Spokane Valley includes many native plants, thanks to help from long-time BWS manager, landscape designer, and Firwood Nursery owner Belinda Driscoll of Deer Park.

The new office, at 2315 N. Discovery Place (just off Mirabeau Parkway, north of I-90 between Pines and Evergreen) just opened in August 2005, so the landscaping is still in its infancy.

But Belinda says that in time it will showcase what can be done, even on a conventional commercial site. Stay tuned to future editions of this newsletter for information about inclusion of WDFW’s Spokane Valley office in a “sustainable garden tour” later this year.