I have little bees who live in my rose canes :) The favorite bee rose I've found is bracteata. The bumblebees sleep on the stamens like pillows! Or they are drunk on the nectar, lol. That one gets out of hand in warm climates, though. The bees who tunnel into my canes aren't picky, so a smaller rose would do, too. Leaf-cutter bees take parts of the leaves of roses also. I have all sorts of bees. They love creeping charlie early on, and then nepeta and clover, ornamental sages, then they adore the anise hyssop when it blooms now through fall. Later, they love the sedums. They like a lot else, too, but those are always covered with them. I didn't realize there were so many kinds of bees until my gardens really got going :) My lawn is rampant with lovely clover, so I step on way too many all season, but I feel worse for them than the painful toes. eta: I forgot that they flock to the lamb's ears flowers if you let those grow. They are so crazy about them I didn't cut them down until they looked awful. They came back really fast, so no need to wait (unless the bees won't let you cut them!) This post was edited by meredith_e on Fri, Jul 11, 14 at 4:32

Those stories just make me sick. I've just been complaining recently about that sort of totalitarianism in my small town. The city comes by regularly and rips limbs off my trees in the back alley - they do not trim them, they rip them with some sort of huge machine on a truck. I know their goal is to kill them, and they did kill one old silver maple that I remember from my childhood when it was a baby. (I live in the same house I grew up in.) I try to flout them where I can. Much to my husband's dismay, I let my kids keep a small stand of corn in the front strip of lawn that sprouted up from last fall's Halloween decorations. I maintained it meticulously, weedeating around it, and handweeding between the stalks. That was cleaned up after harvest, but we still have the watermelon and pumpkin vines out front...Thank goodness I'm not the only rebel. My neighbor and cousin are both growing pumpkins in their front yards too this year!!! I really fear I may be cited soon for my "Green Globe" - an experiment gone awry. My daughter and I plant these beautiful foliage plants every year - well, ok, technically they're weeds...Redshanks...really cute. Anyway, we always stick a few in odd places where they don't have the best conditions. This year we had the brilliant idea of putting them in a heavily amended slightly raised bed right up in front of the porch. They usually top out at around 3 ft. in a good year. This year they are over 6 ft, and filling an entire bed. The stems are like bamboo, about 2" diameter in some places. And when it rains, it flattens the whole thing from the middle. I trimmed it back some, but it just keeps getting out of control. When it's at its best, it's really pretty and different. Even my husband admired it for quite awhile. Everyone asks me what kind of shrub that is - "Wow, that grew really fast..." I can't wait to relieve the city - and my husband - of this problem, but it is just on the verge of setting prodigious amounts of the best seed ever...

That's a beautiful viburnum in the above post! I am trying to landscape for wildlife in my yard, and this has been such a useful thread! So far, in my yard, a large holly seems to be the "favorite" of most wildlife. The birds use it for shelter year round, and it comes alive with bees in the spring when it flowers. Much of the recent plantings I have made (I only moved into my current house ~3 years ago) haven't been super succesful in attracting wildlife. I suspect the problem is that my yard is in the midst of a suburban residential area that almost entirely consists of manicured, empty green lawns. Maybe my lone yard, diversely planted as it is becoming, just isn't enough attraction for most wildlife? Birds in particular seem few and far between, though I do notice a variety of bees and other pollinators in the spring. Sadly, my neighbor just cleared out all the undergrowth and brush in a small patch of woods on his property because, as he told me, he was "afraid of snakes." I am worried that the brush pile I am trying to create on my own property will not last long...the folks in this neighborhood like to complain about any landscaping that deviates from the manicured norm. But I am trying! Claire

We live in a suburb of Toronto on a 1/4 acre. This is our first year observing the birds so I can't identify all of them yet, but so far the ones we can identify are cardinals, mourning doves, robins, chickadees, sparrows, woodpeckers, finches, grackles, starlings, plus one tiny owl last Halloween. More exciting for me has been the family of raccoons who nest in our silver maple. The tree is right beside the patio where I sit on warm nights. Last summer, Mama raccoon was so used to me sitting there that she didn't mind my observing her leading her four babies down the tree, one at a time, about five feet away from me! One of her daughters stayed with her this year and they spent some time wintering in my garage (I made a bed for them). Here's a pic of last year's baby... There seems to be a wildlife freeway through our yard. In addition to the raccoons, we get visits from opossum and skunk who walk by the patio on a regular basis. Can't wait to see them again this year!