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WHAT'S NEW
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Bring birds and butterflies to your garden
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Turn your yard into a welcome retreat for your flying friends.
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By Kat Tancock
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The flowers and plants in your garden may be attractive, but nothing compares to the pleasure and beauty that come from watching birds and butterflies frolic in your yard. Beyond enjoyment, your personal space can be an essential part of these creatures' habitat. Read on for tips on attracting birds and butterflies to your garden.
Your garden is a habitat
It may seem like your little backyard can't make a difference for wildlife but in reality, you can give birds and butterflies a much-needed place to call home. "A backyard butterfly garden really makes a difference to local butterfly populations," says James Miskelly, a butterfly biologist based in Vancouver
Island, B.C. And the same is true for birds, especially migratory species. "They're desperate to rest along their flight," says Bridget Stutchbury, author of Silence of the Songbirds (HarperCollins, 2007).
Create a magnet for butterflies and birds
"A good butterfly garden should be able to provide butterflies with some of the resources they need to complete their life cycles to help offset the effects of habitat destruction," says Miskelly, noting that many species are facing a shortage of habitat. "The key is to create a space that includes the elements they need to go [to] through their whole cycle, not just flowers." Stutchbury adds that food and shelter are the primary elements that will attract birds to your garden. "Especially during migration," she says, "songbirds fly at night and they need shelter and food during the daytime."
5 tips for attracting butterflies
"The best plants to include in a butterfly garden are not flowers for the adults, but the plants that the caterpillars like to eat," says Miskelly. "You will have more butterflies in your garden because there will be more in your whole neighborhood." He offers the following tips for attracting butterflies:
1. Plan to have nectar-providing flowers such as butterfly weed, coneflower, milkweed, black-eyed susan and nasturtium in bloom in your garden throughout the growing season.
2. Grow milkweed and asters, which provide both nectar (for adults) and caterpillar food.
3. Other plants that provide food for caterpillars include willows, grasses and stinging nettle.
4. Butterflies also appreciate sources of water. This can come in the form of wet gravel or mud, sap flow or old fruit.
5. Some butterflies need places to hibernate. Good options include old sheds, woodpiles and loose shingles.
7 tips for attracting birds
Stutchbury suggests the following steps to making your garden bird-friendly:
1. Plant a variety of flowering plants and, instead of deadheading them, let them go to seed -- "the birds will pick their own seeds off the flowers instead of going to a birdfeeder," she says.
2. Plant flowers that will be in bloom throughout the growing season. "It means you see birds in your backyard at different times of the year," Stutchbury says.
3. Sunflowers, daisies, thistles and goldenrod are among the best choices, although she notes that she has even seen a migratory bird eating the seeds off a dandelion head.
4. Birds love fruit, especially in the fall -- consider planting native fruiting trees in your garden, such as red mulberry, sumac, serviceberry or white ash.
5. Have native trees and shrubs -- such as cedar, spruce or hemlock -- in your yard to provide shelter for birds all year round.
6. Ditch your wood fence, suggests Stutchbury, and instead, "use evergreens to provide shelter for birds as well as privacy."
7. Rather than bundling up sticks and other yard waste to get picked up at the curb, create a brush pile in the corner of your yard where birds can stay warm in the cold weather. "To us, it's garbage, but to birds, it's shelter," Stutchbury says.
More than a garden
By making your yard a haven for visiting wildlife, not only will you help out bird and butterfly populations in need of a place to live, but you'll also create a nature habitat that will provide endless enjoyment and educational value for everyone who visits your yard. Just pick the right plants and provide a little shelter, and let the birds and butterflies do the rest.
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