Score your yard

The five things wildlife needs.

Read each one. Tap the box if your yard has it today. No email needed to score — this is yours to run.

Water — open and reachable.

Is there clean water something can actually drink from or land on? A basin, a fountain, an open channel — not a sealed pipe.

At Huerta: the acequia channel, open and reachable.

Have it

Food — across the seasons.

Does something flower, fruit, or set seed in every season — nectar in spring, berries and seed into fall and winter? A mowed lawn feeds nothing.

Hill Country natives that carry it: esperanza, Turk’s cap, cenizo, agarita, Texas mountain laurel, Texas persimmon, prickly pear, inland sea oats.

Have it

Cover — shelter and nesting.

Is there somewhere to hide, shelter from heat, and nest? Thorny shrubs and bunchgrasses do this work — bare ground and clipped hedges don’t.

What gives cover: thorny shrubs like agarita, and native bunchgrasses like Gulf muhly and inland sea oats.

Have it

Places to raise young.

Cover keeps an animal alive. Raising young is more — dense native structure and host grasses give insects, birds, and pollinators somewhere to lay and rear the next generation.

What builds it: host grasses and dense, layered native planting — not isolated specimen plants in mulch.

Have it

Host plants — native milkweed.

This is the one most yards miss. Monarch caterpillars eat milkweed and nothing else. No native milkweed, no monarchs born here — they just pass through.

The keystone: native milkweed lets monarchs breed on site, not just feed.

Have it

0 of 5 in place

Tap the boxes above as you read. Most yards land at one or two.

Get it verified free

It works — we built one

Five elements, one garden, real animals.

Huerta de Atrio — the “Mission Grounds” garden — is a mission-styled native and edible planting in the Texas Hill Country, built by Noon around exactly these five elements. Monarch butterflies and a gray fox have both been observed on site. Native milkweed lets the monarchs breed there instead of merely passing over.

We record what shows up on the ground against open biodiversity data — iNaturalist, eBird, GBIF — as a tracked layer of the property’s Land Record.

Field-observed — not a lab-confirmed survey

Why the score matters

A yard with all five can qualify.

Hit all five and your yard becomes eligible for real, recognized habitat credentials — the kind almost no landscaper in San Antonio offers to design toward.

Eligible — not held

Monarch Waystation

Registered through Monarch Watch. Needs native milkweed and a spread of nectar sources, no insecticides, room to grow. A yard built around the five points can meet it.

Eligible — not held

NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat

The National Wildlife Federation mark. It asks for water, food, cover, and places to raise young — the same four pillars you just scored against.

Straight talk: these are credentials a qualifying yard can apply for — not marks Noon holds for you or hands you on day one. We tell you honestly whether your yard is eligible, and we can design and plant it toward qualifying. We never claim a certification that isn’t registered.

Get the free field check — instant

Send me the field check.

Leave your email and you’ll get the printable 5-point field check to download — walk your yard, score it yourself. Want it verified on the ground? Every yard earns a free on-site Site Read: 60–90 minutes on the property, written summary in 48 hours.

Is your yard wildlife habitat?

The five things wildlife needs.

Five elements, one garden, real animals.

A yard with all five can qualify.

Send me the field check.

Done — here’s your field check.