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Flower Gardens to Attract
Birds and Butterflies
Welcoming Wildlife to Your Yard
Flowering plants, bulbs, trees, and shrubs offer birds and butterflies the two things they need most—food and shelter.
If you like to watch birds and butterflies, move beyond a basic home landscape of a lawn, a tree, and a few bordering shrubs. Expand your landscape to welcome nature as you discover connections between birds, insects, and wildlife with a carefully planned environment and habitat.
With the right plantings, birds and butterflies will soon appear, visit, feed, and rear their young. You may be surprised that many probably already do!
What Birds and Butterflies Need
When you’re ready to invite birds—even hummingbirds—or butterflies to visit your yard, you’ll first have to consider a few options.
If your site is sunny and protected, colorful butterflies, hovering hummingbirds, and larger birds are a natural focus for plantings that will give you a closer view.
Large, shaded areas also are perfect for many beautiful bird species. Consider fencing and dense shrubs that provide cover, since a well-protected area is safer from predators and encourages more birds to visit.
Use Your Present Garden as a Starting Point
Begin growing a wildlife garden for birds and butterflies by starting with your yard’s existing plant material. Enhance it by saving some plants, then add new species carefully chosen for your avian guests.
If you must start over from scratch, read carefully about the different types of plants—trees, shrubs, berries and fruit, vines, and ground covers—to incorporate in your landscape.
By careful selection, you’ll fill your garden with plant species that offer a range of food and shelter, protection and nesting places, perching spots, and nest-building materials.
The result will be both beautiful and practical. It will make your landscape a welcome mat for many species of birds and butterflies to visit your yard month by month, season by season, and all year round.
Gardens for Birds and Butterflies
The opportunity to enjoy birds and butterflies is a big bonus for nature-loving homeowners when they plan welcoming flower gardens and landscapes.
Birds add excitement to the garden with their cheerful songs and quick movements. Invite birds to your garden by providing the four essential elements they continually seek: food, shelter, nesting sites, and water.
Besides their obvious beauty and movement, butterflies are benefit the entire environment by pollinating flowers as they feed on nectar. Even a small space devoted to a backyard butterfly garden provides them with a sanctuary and helps local butterfly populations survive.
Birds
Bird feeders are one wonderful garden addition that attracts birds. Choose a feeder style that suits your garden theme. Regularly fill it with seed, suet, or insect meal. If your region has hummingbirds, add a sugar-water feeder to feed them as well.
Remember that birds are messy and particular eaters, so choose heat-treated seed to any prevent spilled seed from sprouting in your beds.
Also provide birds that visit your yard a feast of edible landscape plants: plant trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, and perennials that produce edible berries, seeds, nuts, and nectar.
Native plants from your region are your best choice for attracting local birds, although some birds also eat the fruit and berries of many different ornamental species.
It’s always a thrill to see a flock of goldfinches arrive to feast on your coreopsis after it has gone to seed or a hummingbird stop by to sip nectar from your columbine.
Many birds also eat insects. Acrobatic swallows catching pesky flying insects is a welcome sight on a summer evening, as are birds picking insects from sturdy, shrubs, and trees.
Next, consider shelter and cover. Birds need safety to feel at home.
Create welcoming habitats by planting an overstory of trees and an understory of shrubs, vines, and grasses that provide shelter from wind, weather, and predators. Evergreens are best for providing protection from wind, snow, and rain during winter months.
Once you know your local birds, invite them to move right in and raise their young.
Install rustic birdhouses and nest boxes. When focusing on a specific species—bluebirds, cardinals, or thrushes, for instance—check the height and nesting style requirements for them. These nesting details vary greatly between bird species.
Mount birdhouses out of reach of pets and other predators. Trees, including dogwood and American holly, provide food as well as nesting space; you simply supply the plant and the birds will do all the rest.
Butterflies
The arrival of butterflies is a magical part of summer.
Those butterflies start their lives as eggs laid by adult butterflies. They hatch and become caterpillars. Planting common host plants in your yard means you’ll soon enjoy butterflies.
Some plants are also food sources. They include hollyhock, goldenrod, milkweed, passion flower, and windflower. Plant these in your landscape, and you may soon enjoy watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis.
A good starting point is planting brightly colored flowers known to attract butterflies. These plants usually bear nectar-rich flowers. Choose sunny locations as planting sites.
Certain flowers, including asters, coneflowers, Oregon grape, and viburnum, are butterfly magnets.
Water is also important to many butterflies. Provide them a shallow water source with protection from high winds.
A shallow dish filled with moist sand is ideal. Butterflies gather on flat surfaces near water to rest, basking in the sun.
Water Features and Wildlife
As you’ve seen for butterflies, providing moisture is a powerful attractant. The same is true for birds.
Water is an essential element of the best wildlife habitats. Birds need water for drinking and bathing.
A water feature—fountain, birdbath, shallow saucer, or pond—is a beautiful addition to a natural garden and a great location for bird watching.
Place water features where you can see them comfortably from your house or a seating area within the yard.
Birdbaths should be mounted at least 3 feet (90 cm) above the ground. Place them in open locations so that birds can see any approaching predators.
A basin with a diameter of 2–3 feet (60–90 cm) will attract a whole flock of bathing birds.
If you have space, plan for an irregularly shaped pond rather than a raised birdbath. Work local stone into the edging, in keeping with your garden theme.
Ponds with gentle inclines along their edges, or a pebble beach, allows birds to wade.
Surround your pond with sheltering semi-aquatic plants or moisture-loving plants.