Mendham Township Joins Movement to Become a Wildlife-Friendly Town

Mendham Township Joins Movement to Become a Wildlife-Friendly Town

Mendham Township, led by the Environmental Commission, recently registered with the National Wildlife Federation & NJ Audubon’s Community Wildlife Habitat program. Each certified site within the community provides the four basic elements that all wildlife need: food, water, cover and places to raise their young, while integrating sustainable gardening practices like using native plants and not using pesticides. 

Native plants are great choices for your garden or landscape. Because they evolved in your region, they thrive in the local climate, weather patterns, rainfall levels, soil moisture with little need for extra watering or pesticides or fertilizers and provide green infrastructure to prevent flooding & storm water runoff. But most importantly, native plants are the plants that wildlife rely on for survival. If each of us added one new garden bed filled with native plants each year, the impact on wildlife and essential pollinators would be huge. We already have 14 homes certified, will yours be next? Visit https://www.nwf.org/CertifiedWildlifeHabitat to certify your yard. 

The Mendham Township Committee supports this exciting new initiative and encourages homeowners to learn more about the project and consider certifying their yards in order to make Mendham Township a more wildlife-friendly community. Mayor Nick Monaghan “hopes that residents will recognize how important their yard is to the health of our town and its wildlife. Providing habitat and using sustainable gardening practices support our local pollinators and other wildlife.”

Our kickoff event will be participating in the 2nd annual Great Swamp Watershed Association’s Native Plant Sale. From April 1-22 you can order native plant plugs from https://www.greatswamp.org/native-plant-sale/ Local pickup will be on April 30 from 2-4pm at the Mendham Township Municipal parking lot at 2 West Main St in Brookside. We hope to also give away free tree seedlings during this time. All residents are encouraged to come by and learn more about the project and take home some free trees to help wildlife in their yard. 

Also save the date for a webinar on May 12 from 7-8pm titled “Gardens with Buzz” by Mary Anne Borge. Mary Anne led Lambertville Goes Wild, which already achieved certification and is an instructor at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, a Pennsylvania Master Naturalist, and the Editor of Butterfly Gardener, a magazine published by the North American Butterfly Association.

For more information and updates including upcoming webinars, follow us on Instagram @sustainablemendham and on Facebook at The Nature of Mendham