Cloistered Bird Habitat — Greenwood Lake, NY

Ellie came to me in late 2024 for help ordering her garden. A lifelong birder and advocate for small beings, she was delighted by the abundance of creatures inhabiting her wild front yard, but wanted to refine the space into something more pleasing to her neighbors. We settled on the idea of a “cloistered garden”—a wild, ebullient meadow on the inside, and a simple planting of shrubs, orderly ornamental grasses, and a few flowering perennials facing the street.

Ellie’s Garden Before:

The interior meadow is a matrix planting of native grasses, sedges, and perennials, meant to tumble and intermingle as they would in a wild-grown field. Instead of razing the site and starting fresh, we preserved clumps of existing asters and goldenrods, gently carved beds out of the yard, and simply mowed where we wanted paths. On sites with a strong native plant presence, it is my preference to preserve as much of the seed bank as possible and welcome nature as a collaborator in the garden’s future.

The exterior plantings are made up primarily of smooth hydrangea, spicebush, and redtwig dogwood—orderly, tidy shrubs that also happen to be wildlife resource powerhouses. They create an informal, hedge-like mass around the perimeter of the property, with a few intentional gaps that allow glimpses of the meadow within. It is both of our hopes that the neighbors will peek into the inner sanctum and cultivate a desire to welcome a little wildness into their own yards.