Annette Boerner said when she doesn’t get around to turning her kitchen compost pile, she can imagine the microorganisms inside gathering at the center to socialize.

When she does stir the organic material to get it to convert to compost, she envisions them grumbling about having to go to work.

“That’s where my mind is always,” Boerner said. “With the creatures.”

With compost piles, vegetable plots and hundreds of plants to attract the birds and the bees as well as other insects and creatures, Boerner and her husband Bill have created a wildlife haven and wonderland garden in their south Anacortes backyard.

The couple’s 3 acres will be one of eight stops on this year’s Fidalgo Wildlife Habitat Tour from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 27. Free maps and garden descriptions will available in front of the Snagboat Heritage Center starting at 10 a.m.

“This year’s tour of eight yards features many gardens that incorporate no chemical use, little or no lawn, vegetable gardens mixed with flowering trees and shrubs that draw pollinators and use of worm bins and compost piles,” said Linda Zielinski who is coordinating the tour with Martha Hall.

Boerner’s garden incorporates all these ideas plus all the elements necessary to be certified a backyard wildlife habitat — water and food sources, shelter and nesting sites.

Manmade ponds and birdbaths provide the water source, while hundreds of plants offer seeds, nectar and insects for food. The garden also has an immeasurable number of shrubs for birds and animals to use as shelter.

“In their yard, tall grass and meadow areas are available for ground nesting birds in addition to the more often considered nesting in trees and shrubs,” Zielinski said.

Visitors to Boerner’s backyard can’t help to be instantly awed with the abundance and variety of vegetation — from pink Eden climbing roses on one side to Alabama honeysuckle scrambling up a trellis on the other, and from mullein and bee balm that attract hummingbirds to Duchess of Albany clematis sprinkled throughout.

The vegetable garden nestled behind a greenhouse is bursting with Brussels sprout plants and an assortment of lettuce, while another food plot at the back of the yard is bordered on one side with a wall of raspberry bushes.

Boerner does not use pesticides or herbicides in her yard.

“We started organic gardening 40 years ago after our dog almost died from licking poison from his paws, she said. “The poison was in the lawn fertilizer that we had used.”

With a diversity of plants — certain species can be used to repel bugs that are a threat to others — Boerner doesn’t need pesticides and weeds are pulled by hand and thrown on a natural or passive compost pile stretching about 15 feet long at the back of the yard. Boerner doesn’t water it or turn it unlike the food scrap compost, which needs to be turned to get it hot enough to put those socializing microorganisms to work breaking down pathogens to create a healthy compost.

“It’s part of all of our life cycles and its part of nature,” Zielinski said. “The life forms that help build soil tilth are an often neglected but extremely important part of the life cycle.”

“The Boerners have gone one logical step further,” Zielinski said. “Health of their soil is paid attention to with minimal tilling for their vegetable garden and rebuilding with compost mulches.”

Starting out two decades ago with just a field, vegetable garden and fruit trees, Boerner said gardening is a continual learning process.

“You are never there but always trying,” she said. “There have been many changes but now we will settle with this.”

Boerner advises others to work with nature and imitate her. This means no fall cleanup of leaves and brush to provide a blanket of winter mulch and food for birds, animals and insects. It also means mulching with anything you can think of including weeds.

“Keep your soil’s microorganisms happy through the year and they will repay you with wonderful, rich soil which is the backbone of a healthy garden,” Boerner said.

“The whole thing is watching what is going on,” she said. “Don’t be too organized.”

Nature likes variety and things busy and unstructured, Zielinski said. It’s people who want things orderly.

The one area that is orderly in Boerner’s yard is the authentic English knot garden. The area is made up of Hetz Midget arborvitae and other shrubs bordering herbs such as silver thyme and chives. The garden consists of Mediterranean plants accustomed to cool, wet winters and summer drought so they don’t need to be watered. The vegetation is arranged in a way that it grows in geometric patterns. In the past, knot garden patterns were based on tapestries, rugs or lace found in one’s home.

The plants are trimmed by hand along with others in the garden in July while the most labor-intensive work occurs in the spring. Though it can take a lot to keep the garden growing, Boerner said it is not work to her but more of a compulsion.

“I can be out here for hours and the time goes by so fast,” she said. “And it rewards you so much. A garden rewards you 100 percent.”

Boerner’s yard along with nearly 600 others on Fidalgo and Guemes islands have been certified as wildlife habitats during the past four years through the encouragement of the Fidalgo Backyard Wildlife Habitat project led by Richard Bergner.

The tour showcases a few of those yards and shows people how they too can add beauty and interest to their yards while supplying shelter and sustenance to wildlife, Zielinski said.

“Disappearing wildlife habitat is a major problem on our island,” she said. “We all can do something about it and add great enjoyment to our lives additionally.”

Fidalgo Wildlife Habitat Tour

• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 27

• Free

• Maps and yard descriptions available in front of the W.T. Preston Snagboat at 713 R Ave.

For more information on certifying a yard as a wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation or Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, contact Richard Bergner at 299-2579 or .