The sight of a drooping flower head is often all it takes to prod us to unravel the hose and turn on the spigot. We’re less attuned to the water preferences and needs of birds and insects, though, and we may unintentionally leave them high and dry.
That’s probably at least in part because no one water source meets all their needs. “When we talk about water in a garden, we need to not just picture a bowl of water or a birdbath or a pond,” says Matthew Shepherd, director of outreach and education for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Ore. “It’s also moisture, wet ground and mud.”
