Written by Elaine Evans and published on https://www.hgtv.com/.
You love your pets and even consider them as members of your family! But, unfortunately, sometimes it is difficult to maintain a perfect yard with pets roaming around it.
Across central Ohio, you can see countless yards that have all of the familiar signs: big holes in the ground, dead spots in the grass, dog poop everywhere and flowers that have been trampled on. These yards have all of the bare essentials to be a beautiful space, but the owners have seemingly let their animals take them over.
Make a Pet-Friendly Garden
I’m remembering this totally adorable springtime scene: middle child, age 5, wearing overalls and romping in a pile of Texas bluebonnets and Labrador retriever puppies. He chose the puppy with the green collar and named him Ray. We took a photo of it.
But although it was one of said dog’s favorite things to do in our backyard when he was 5, we do NOT have a springtime photo of Ray chowing down on pink fiberglass insulation.
Your garden, in contrast, can be a “peaceable kingdom” for both pets and people. It just takes a little understanding of the pet’s point of view. Seeing it their way will help you keep them safe, happy, and the heck out of your insulation, not to mention your irises.
Edible Delights
To cats, dogs, tortoises and horses, irises = lunch, the kind worth swallowing a whole lot of geraniums and salvia to get to. Eating flowers (any, all), fruit and foliage washed down with available liquid is how animals roll.
Know what’s on the menu. Get rid of toxic plants from the ASPCA’s list and add healthy treats like wheatgrass, or fragrant herbs like artemesia and tansy that keep fleas down. Fence off your lilies and use natural herbicides. Let water flow rather than stand stagnant and keep it chemical-free for drinking and swimming (and frogs).
A Restful Refuge
For Labradors, big setters and rhinos alike, trampling your plants is an essential part of eating them, but also of napping. With napping, of course, comes digging, preferably in the shade. There’s a routine to all of this, and certain favored routes through the garden, too. Removal of spiny, thorny, prickly plant life is much appreciated.
Relocate your hostas, plant springy resilient things, or lay down some big undiggable stone. Elsewhere in the garden, a patch of smaller round rocks (easier to re-spread than dirt or mulch) or a “treasure island” of sand containing buried toys can divert diggers from shaded beds or the lawn.
Personal Space
Speaking of diversion, you might want to establish a “restroom” of juniper, which male dogs find alluring. That adorable pet condo is too nice to pee on—and besides, everyone already knows who it belongs to—as opposed to parts of the lawn. If you act quickly and hit the grass with lots of water right after it’s been “fertilized,” you might save it from turning yellow or brown.
Original post here https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/landscaping-and-hardscaping/design/make-a-pet-friendly-garden.
