landscaping a outdoor redfoot area?

[naturalman91]

i was wondering if some redfoot keeps could chime in and help with idea of how to landscape a outdoor redfoot area making it fit they're needs/wants

pictures if possible are awesome! thanks in advance

 

[pfara]

The first thing I ended up doing was looking up a list of tort safe plants to start growing. It takes a few years to get the soil to be cooperative in my case because we have heavy clay. So, for the past two years I've been building up my soil. The stuff I planted in the beginning were things like rose of sharon, mulberry, dandelion, hostas and broadleaf plantain. I chose the location and then started planting randomly but spaced out. It'll look pretty puny at first but it'll really start filling in by year two. Then I started adding other plants like mallow, chicory, sow thistle, chickweed, lettuces, testudo mix, evening primrose, hibiscus moscheutos, abutilon, nasturtiums, hollyhock, and a rose bush. A lot of them were started by scattering seeds or started indoors during winter and placed randomly (again) around their space. I also started growing fruiting trees/bushes like figs and blueberries.

You end up finding what grows well and what you really dislike. For me, I ended up getting rid of the hollyhock (it suffers bad rust), the rose bush (it's a June bug magnet) and hibiscus moscheutos (well, the caterpillars keep eating it down).

It all filled in really well at this point. It's definitely not a manicured look, but I think it's perfect for tortoises. Provides a lot of variety to eat, plenty of shade and is a nice, humid atmosphere for my reds. Next year when I rebuild my deck, I'll add on a giant "cage" that surrounds the whole plant area. I'll probably also hang/plant a bunch of carnivorous plants to help with pesky insects.

*This is the inspiration for my deck add-on: http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/its-complete-final-stage.2604/