Gone Native: A Massachusetts Farm and Garden

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The Sousas have turned their farm into a sanctuary for migrating birds, insects, bats and native plants, and for Ellen's horses. Photo By Ellen Sousa

We fell in love the moment we saw this farm. My husband, Robert, and I had been looking for a property where we could fulfill my dream of keeping my horses at home rather than boarding them. A passionate gardener, I immediately recognized the potential of this 4-acre parcel of hemlock- and beech-wooded river valley in central Massachusetts, complete with a farm pond, stream and large pasture. Previous owners had established wonderful garden “bones” with fieldstone retaining walls and electric fencing to keep horses from eating the plants and shrubs.

Beautiful as the property was, it needed a little love. I was eager to eradicate invasive and non-native plants and encourage a diverse and robust habitat of native plants, insects and wildlife. We planted groups of wildlife-friendly shrubs (such as gray and silky dogwood, serviceberry, bayberry, blueberry, viburnum and chokeberry) to create thickets, which provide habitat for birds, snakes, insects and small mammals. These shrubs provide sustenance to migrating birds who return (exhausted and hungry) here in spring. Once established in their natural growing conditions, the plants don’t require fertilizer or supplemental irrigation.

I bought a few native plants, then collected their seeds and propagated them in larger numbers. I grew beautiful native flowering plants such as butterfly weed, liatris, coneflower, boltonia, rose mallow, Virginia rose, rudbeckia, New England aster, perennial sunflowers (helianthus) and switch grass. We also encouraged the wild goldenrod to seed itself, providing late-season butterfly nectar and bird seed.

Birds, bats and butterflies 

During our first summer here, we watched ruby-throated hummingbirds visit the bee balm, trumpet honeysuckle, verbena and scarlet runner beans. Bats moved into the bat house and gorged on horse flies and mosquitoes—making our horses very happy. Butterflies visited the salvia, aster, sunflower, zinnia and cosmos, and monarch caterpillars hatched on the scarlet milkweed I grew in a pot on the patio.

The first winter, we put up bird feeders and nesting boxes to encourage birds to stay. That spring, a pair of tree swallows nested in the birdhouse at the edge of our pasture and our barn hosted a family of Eastern phoebes. Both birds are insect-eating machines, so we were happy to have them. Since then, they have returned every spring, like old friends.

We also left an area next to our riding ring unmowed, allowing native grasses such as little bluestem to grow, and we saw fireflies for the first time during our second summer here. We seeded white Dutch clover into bare areas of the lawn and encouraged wild violets and bluets to grow into a low-maintenance lawn that stays green without irrigation, even in hot, dry August. Our spring-flowering “lawn” is a nectar source for early-season butterflies and pollinators, in turn attracting birds hunting for insects to feed their nestlings.