Capturing Habitat Garden History in The Smithsonian Gardens

Your wildlife habitat garden can be digitally archived in Smithsonian Community of Gardens as part of its Archives of American Gardens! Submit images or video and stories of gardens where people live, work, play, learn and worship to be shared and preserved here.

Bug B&B exhibit Outside the National Museum of Natural History Image courtesy of Smithsonian Gardens- an accredited American Alliance of Museum.

National Wildlife Federation is proud to be Smithsonian Gardens’ first Community Collaborator to facilitate getting our national network of Certified Wildlife Habitats® and other Garden for Wildlife spaces, such as Schoolyard Habitats, Community Wildlife Habitats®, and Butterfly Heroes™ monarch and pollinator gardens included in the archives. We will share relevant garden stories from our blog, but the best stories come from you!

Browsing the stories in Community of Gardens feels a bit like NPR’s StoryCorps, as it allows the contributor to express what the garden space means to them and how it helps wildlife, people and the planet in a personal way. The entries are inspiring and poignant-and your perspectives as wildlife gardeners will enrich the archive.  Please tag your entry,  #Garden4Wildlife, #Certified Wildlife Habitat® and reference National Wildlife Federation in your garden description.

Smithsonian Gardens is not only a digital experience, it is an ideal place to visit in person and to learn more about how gardens/gardeners are helping shape America’s landscape.

As noted by internationally known garden writer, Adrian Higgins of The Washington Post, “An added virtue of habitat gardens: They’re pleasing to humans, too.”   

Habitat Homes exhibit Mary Livingston Ripley Garden Image courtesy of Smithsonian Gardens

In his recent article, National Wildlife Federation’s 46-year-old Certified Wildlife Habitat® efforts provide the context to introduce the new Smithsonian Gardens’ “Habitat”. The  first campus-wide exhibition on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C.   Launched this May during Garden for Wildlife Month, it is in place through December 2020.  It features 14 exhibits in outdoor gardens and indoor spaces.

“This  exhibit supports the core values of the Smithsonian Gardens, that “protecting habitat, protects life. We were excited to be connected to National Wildlife Federation’s habitat efforts in the Washington Post and encourage people to visit the display over the next year and half.” 

Smithsonian Gardens’ director, Barbara Faust

If you can’t get to Washington D.C. you can see beautiful pictures of the exhibit here.

And don’t forget to archive your wildlife garden with the Smithsonian!

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Published: June 5, 2019