Wells Branch Wild

Every Home Matters.

There are 40+ million homes in the US with yards.

Combined, American residential lawns cover
approximately 135 million acres.

That's larger than all national parks combined.

Right now, those 135 million acres are mostly
ecological deserts. Monoculture grass. Sprayed.
Mowed. Watered. Producing nothing for wildlife.

But if every homeowner planted just 10 native plants,
created one small habitat feature, and stopped
spraying just a portion of their yard:

We'd create the largest connected pollinator corridor
in human history.

This isn't theoretical. This is math.

10 native plants per yard × 40 million yards = 400
million native plants. More than every conservation
restoration project in American history combined.

Your yard is not too small to matter. It IS the
habitat. For millions of species, your suburb is the
ONLY habitat they have left. The farms are monoculture.
The forests are fragmented. The roadsides are mowed.

Your yard — your messy, imperfect, dandelion-having,
leaf-pile-keeping, native-plant-growing yard — is the
last refuge.

What to do:
Plant 10 native plants this year. Start with:
3 native perennials (coneflower, black-eyed Susan,
native aster).
2 native shrubs (serviceberry, winterberry, native
viburnum).
1 native tree (oak — a single oak supports 500+
species of caterpillars. The #1 wildlife tree in
North America).

Leave one corner messy — brush pile, leaf litter,
dead stems.
Add a shallow water source (birdbath, ground-level
dish).
Stop spraying pesticides on at least part of your
yard.
Let some lawn go wild.

Conservation isn't only something that happens in
national parks with government funding and press
releases.

Conservation is what you do in your yard on Saturday.

The birds aren't looking at Yellowstone for help.

They're looking at you.

Your yard.

Today.

Your poem for today: Leave the leaves, and plant these.

In Texas, where heat and changing conditions can shape what thrives, choosing plants that support fireflies is a smart move for both beauty and function.

Learn something new every day. These are great pollinators that come back better every year.

I got a packet of Ferry-Morse Pollinator Mix wildflower seeds at Lowes this Spring. This is the first flower to bloom of the assortment, most of which I recognize. Not this one. ID confirmed: it's a Chinese-Forget-Me-Not, native to Asia, invasive. SIGH. There are several more beginning to bloom. This plant was actually listed on the packet in its botanical name, but I didn't look it up.
There are native Forget Me Nots, but these are not them. Be suspicious. Get IDs on plants you don't recognize. (INaturalist is good.) I'll be writing to the seed company, and complaining to Lowes about this.

They left out what great horizontal scratching "posts" they make, which does hasten their disintegration a bit. :)

Another reason to shop locally, and thank HEB.

H-E-B partnered with community groups to fund 16 pollinator projects across Texas. The initiative put $50,000 into native bee and butterfly habitat restoration.
That doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it created 16 nectar corridors running from San Antonio to Dallas. Monarchs and native bees now have 16 new pit stops in a state where highway medians and parking lots used to be the only options.
The projects are community-based. Local people planting local plants. H-E-B gets good press, sure. But the bees get actual forage. The butterflies get actual milkweed.
In a corporate landscape full of greenwashing, this is literally dirt-level work. Sixteen corridors won't save the migration alone. But they connect the dots between the big preserves.
That's how you build a network. One parking lot garden at a time.

Many new cultivars and "improvements" are for looks only, but fail at fulfilling their vital role in our environment. Look for the original variety; they are still beautiful and support our pollinators.

Jill Douglass
10:19 AM (7 minutes ago)
to Wells Branch Neighbors
Tree ID Walk April 2026 (Instagram Post (45)).png

Learn how to identify native trees and participate in documenting trees on iNaturalist during the Wells Branch BioBlitz week!
Native plants will be given for free to participants!
All ages welcome.

Register here: https://forms.gle/Rrur7VRSPwDM7E2P8
SignUp for our BioBlitz (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wbwc-spring-2026-bioblitz)

📍Meet-up location: Mills Pond — the picnic table near the bathrooms below the dam