Your own little slice of heaven at home

A chorus of birds, butterflies, colorful plants, trickling water - does this appeal to you? Your backyard (or front yard) is your private space that can become your own little paradise. While I like to travel, I really love coming back home to enjoy my little slice of backyard heaven.

If you want to accomplish something that is relatively easy and educational, consider certifying your yard, community garden or school garden with a wildlife-habitat designation.

Everything we do in our living spaces affects our communities and, ultimately, our planet. Wildlife health depends on your actions - from your recycling habits to your gardening style, which includes the type and amount of pesticide you apply, how you mow your lawn and the types of plants on your property.

But you don't have to be a planting genius or need acres and acres to achieve certification status. You can start one plant or one bush at a time and keep building. There are several programs in the country that make it easy to certify your yard.

In general, most programs require that you fulfill a few basic requirements for certification. You must provide appropriate food sources, adequate water, shelter, a place to raise young and a garden with sustainability in mind. By satisfying these requirements, you will see more birds and butterflies and even frogs and turtles if you are lucky.

The best food sources and cover for your yard would be plants native to your specific area. Additional bonuses would be birdhouses, bird feeders, compost piles and fruiting plants.

By attracting more insects to your garden, you will increase wildlife as the insects feed on native plants, and other creatures feed on the insects. If insects lose their food supplies, they will not thrive and the birds and other wildlife that eat them will also disappear. Steer clear of "pest-free" plants!

Insects prefer to eat native plants, according to Doug Tallamy, entomologist and author of "Bringing Nature Home." Tallamy found that more than 90 percent of native insects consume only the leaves of native plants, since they do not have the enzymes required to digest leaves from non-natives.

The Backyard Wildlife Habitat program, started by the National Wildlife Federation in 1973, shows people how to make their yards and communities friendly to wildlife (www.nwf.org/In-Your-Backyard.aspx). Want to take things one step further? You can also certify your community or schoolyard. NWF's Campus Ecology program benefits colleges and universities.

Maybe you're passionate about butterflies. If so, consider some of the butterfly-habitat programs such as the Monarch Waystation Program (www.monarchwatch.org/waystations). This program's mission is to "create, conserve and protect monarch habitats." Monarch butterflies migrate from the U.S. and Canada to areas in Mexico and California where they overwinter. Their migration is threatened by habitat loss in North America as well as in their overwintering sites.

Milkweeds (asclepias) are a staple of the monarch butterfly, which they use as both a nectar source and host plant. Monarch larvae feed exclusively on the milkweeds that serve as their host plants. I have a friend who added only a couple of milkweed plants and was rewarded with lovely larvae and monarchs a short time later.

MonarchWatch.org offers seed kits that include various species of milkweed host plants, and several nectar plants such as cosmos, joe-pye weed, purple coneflower, tithonia (Mexican sunflower) and verbena. Locate your Monarch Waystation in a sunny area.

Once you are certified, your site will be listed in the International Monarch Waystation Registry, an online listing of nearly 3,400 Monarch Waystations.

Get inspired and you'll inspire others. The programs offer signs you can purchase to tell everyone you are proud of your yard and your efforts at land stewardship. You'll soon see how contagious backyard habitats can be.

Still need some inspiration? Check out the NWF's Wildlife Gardens Group images at www.flickr.com/groups/wildlifehabitat. I hope to see your garden posted there this year!

• Joe Lamp'l, host of "GardenSMART" on PBS, is a Master Gardener and author. For more information visit joegardener.com.