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Backyard Habitat from page 54

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throughout the summer season, and calling birds were constant.
It grew by itself."
It's that kind of beauty that he wants to foster in his yard, he
says. And it's a beauty with benefits: "Enhancing biodiversity,
reducing fertilizers and pesticides that pollute local watersheds,
saving water, and encouraging native butterflies and birds with
a native food supply. Just like my childhood forest, it keeps
growing and changing, all by itself."
His efforts have qualified the yard as a National Wildlife
Foundation "Certified Wildlife Habitat." A sign attached to his
house reads: "This property provides the four basic habitat ele-
ments needed for wildlife to thrive: Food, water, cover and places to
raise young."
"He has a great time out there;' Naomi concedes. And, from their expan-
sive living room window, "we've seen animals that we've never seen before."
"We are two peas in a pod',' says Lisa Katzman, an environmentally conscious
friend from Bloomfield Hills, who believes in cloth diapers and has a compost
pile. "But Robert has taken it a lot further than me."
It was Katzman who alerted Levine to the requirements of the National
Wildlife Foundation and helped him fulfill one of the requirements. "I bet he
hasn't put his water source in',' she recalls thinking, so she gave him an antique
birdbath on his birthday.

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56

March 22 2007

'm proud of him; he's going about it the right way:'
That's what Joe Derek, Farmington Hills city naturalist, says of Dr. Robert
Levine's efforts at creating a backyard habitat.
"We've kind of paved over and gardened over with the wrong plants
that don't really appeal to butterflies and birds': Derek says. "He's put-
ting back the natural aspects that are a benefit to nature, rather than
being a problem to it."
They may have the same names, but we aren't planting the
same wild-life-attracting plants that our parents and grand-
parents did, Derek says. Many have been cross-bred, which
removes their nectar, he says. "Just because it's red or orange
doesn't mean anything. It has to be the right plant:'
Those "right" plants are the heirloom varieties and native
wild flowers that many nurseries have abandoned for the
more prolific blooming hybrids, according to Derek.
The "natives" include wildflowers you may never heard of,
such as nodding onion, hog peanut, joe-pye weed and prairie
smoke as well as the more well-known black-eyed susan, blue
lobelia, wild geranium and several varieties of goldenrod.
Plenty of sources exist for native species for those willing to
seek them out. Heirloom plants are available over the Internet and
through specialized catalogues and may have a section of their own at
some local nurseries.
Dozens of native grasses, rushes, sedges (low-growing plants with "edges"

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