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Make your yard a home for birds

By Sarah Bryan Miller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Source: MCT News Service

Birdwatching is an addiction that can take over a large chunk of your life _ and your home.

It all starts innocently enough, with a feeder or two, and then spreads; the next thing you know, you have binoculars and a stack of well-thumbed bird books by the windows, and when you go online it's to research the best kinds of seed and suet instead of checking Facebook.

The next step after that: Rethinking your landscaping to attract still more varieties of avians. The good news is that it can benefit your view and the environment as well as the birds.

Bill Minford, head landscape designer at Sherwood's Forest landscaping in the St. Louis area, says there's been a surge in recent years of turning to native plants in landscaping. He's a fan of that surge, for a lot of reasons. "You can have an attractive area that supports native birds and animals," he says, "and you can also have a nice showy flower garden with a succession of colors, if you plant it right."

For urban and suburban gardeners, Minford recommends "a nice compromise between more traditional and wild landscaping, with a good interrelationship of plant material and wildlife."

Native plants are adapted to this climate, and so don't need as much care as exotics in order to flourish. They've been living with the local bugs for centuries, so they require less in the way of chemicals. The advantage from the birdwatcher's point of view, says Minford: "It will bring the birds to your backyard."

First, you have to feed them. Minford likes "the berried bushes and trees _ crabapples, hawthorns, serviceberry, winterberry and a number of varieties of hibernum all are good sources of nutrition for birds."

When it comes to flowers, he recommends coreopsis for long-term blooming. "They come on early and last all season; you can stick with the more native varieties." He also likes cone flowers and gay feather (aka liatris) in the summer. "Zinnias and salvias all have outstanding color."

Others you can try include columbine and black-eyed Susan; and bluebells and lobelias, which attract hummingbirds.

They generally demand more sun than shade and, Minford adds, "the heavy clays (in our soil) always make it more of a challenge" to grow.

Your entire garden doesn't have to go native. Hardy hybrid members of the hibiscus family, for example, produce gorgeous flowers that birds love.

Birds also need a water source, whether it's a simple birdbath or a more elaborate (and expensive) setup. They also like places to hide. Minford likes evergreens of all sorts, particularly junipers. "Birds like that evergreen cover, particularly in the winter."

If you have the time, space and energy for more labor-intensive plantings, you can try raspberries and blueberries, and if you're lucky, you might get a few for yourself. Birds like mulberries, but the purple fruit gets squishy and messy quickly.

To get started with your own garden, the fastest way is to head to the computer. For bird fanciers in this area, missouribirds.com has suggestions on attractive plantings that are native to the region, and thus work well on several levels. Another site, grownative.org, will match your particular growing criteria with plants that do well in this climate.

The Missouri Botanical Garden's Kemper Center has a detailed step-by-step, bird-by-bird guide online at mobot.org. (Does anyone really want to attract grackles? Well, if you do, try putting out cracked corn.) If you need site-specific advice, the horticulturist at your local garden center can help to steer you toward plants that will work in the space you have available.

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(c) 2010, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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