I looked into some pretty specific county level snake data and it appears that many of the DC area counties do support a few small isolated copperhead populations, so I retract my skepticism of your neighbor's id of the snakes (Looks like I need to go looking more the next time I'm visiting relatives in Montgomery County) Unfortunately I can't think of any vegetation that won't be a potentially attractive place for snakes. Even if you plant nothing at all, nature holds no guarantees so it's a matter of how important a slight reduction in risk of snakebite from very low to very very low is and how important having an attractive natural yard is.

Hi Nancy ... we do enjoy all of our woodpeckers. They all come to the feeders. I create a bird buffet on our front porch each winter to have a large covered area of comfort for them. Heated birdbath and such. We get to see the pileated babies also and their hairdos are something to behold. Could we call it spiked? We had a nest of them in our next door neighbors yard a few years back. That was really cool to get to see them feeding, etc. You can see the those photos begin here. You can close the window and look to the left. I was blessed to get a short video of Pale-billed Woodpeckers in Costa Rica with a baby popping in and out of the hole shouting for food. It was pretty high up in the canopy so it's a bit shaky but the parent returns with something and he really pops out of that hole. The parent seemed to be bothered by me, so I stopped filming to leave.

pjb, Sometimes you cannot avoid them though. I know someone who was turning on his faucet and got bit. Someone I used to work with was doing laundry inside her home and reached down to get some clothes and got bit, they figure it came through the dog door. I went to turn the lights off in my garage one evening and turned the corner in my hallway and there was one (I didn't get bit). Several species of rattlesnake will give you the chance to retreat but some like the Mojave green are just plain nasty. In the 20 years we've lived here I have dispatched more rattlers than I care to think about. My 4yr old g-son was less than 1/2 ft from one. Luckily it was injesting and couldn't strike. DH was weeding one winter and touched the back of one- thank God it was lethargic from the cold. I went to get a sweater one night (7/4) from DH's truck- stepped down and heard a rattle. I had to wait in the dark until it rattled again and then I jumped the other way. That was a 3' diamondback- it was less than a foot away. BTW, that 2 year old I posted about last month. The child is Dr. Sean Bush's little boy. Dr Bush who lives about 1/2 mile from us is the ponytail venom doctor from the TV channel Animal Planet's "Venom ER" show. Jude saw the snake in their backyard and tried to pick it up. Dr Bush keeps snakes, spiders, scorpians etc in his garage (well contained) and Jude thinking this was one of his daddy's snakes that got loose wanted to help. If you ever got bit Dr Bush is the man you want to take care of you. In fact he is on call if President Bush (no relation) ever gets bit at his ranch in Crawford.

No natural light in my high rise New Jersey studio ☹️. That is why I purchased the Snake Plant ( requires minimum conditions)