These beautiful plants are for the birds
A year-round love affair had been for most of us not long ago, a window-watching sport during the winter months.
Birding season now runs all 12 months. Birdwatching intrigues us, benefits the environment by adding biodiversity to our yards and neighbourhoods, and provides an educational form of entertainment that kids, seniors and everyone in between can enjoy.
I also have this on good authority: bird-seed sales in Canada have gone through the roof in the last five years. If you are one of the many people who haul bags of bird seed home on a regular basis, here’s an idea: why not grow your own?
My Top 5 bird-seed growing plants and tips: 1. Purple coneflower (sp. echinacea). A native plant that aboriginal peoples used to help boost their immune systems. Everyone, myself included, has tried echinacea tincture to prevent colds and the flu. It is very easy to grow in a sunny position and is a reliably winter-hardy perennial up to Zone 4 (Ottawa/ Montreal). I have 50 of them growing on my property and they do not get watered — ever. I don’t have to control insects or diseases. They bloom from mid-July through September, you can cut them while in bloom and bring them indoors, and (here is the kicker) the seed heads attract small song birds, such as finch, nuthatches and black-capped chickadees. My echinacea “plantation” attracts birds from late fall through winter, until the birds have emptied all of the seed heads. 2. Maiden grass (sp. miscanthus sinensis). Another song-bird magnet for late in the season. I have two large beds with these plants, about 70 in all and three metres high, that I let stand all winter. They stand tall even after a deep snowfall and birds forage through their seed-heavy plumes right up until the spring thaw. If you have ornamental grasses in your garden do not cut them down come fall, but let them stand for the birds. If you don’t have any grasses in your garden, now is the perfect time of year to plant some. The selection at garden retailers is generally good and you will see exactly what you are buying as they’ve had all summer to mature. Hardy to Zone 3. 3. Black-eyed Susan (sp. rudbeckia). Who doesn’t just love this plant? It blooms for up to 12 weeks beginning in mid-summer. Butterflies and honey bees enjoy its nectar and pollen while it is in bloom and when it finishes bloom- ing it produces prodigious quantities of seeds that many foraging song birds enjoy late into the fall and winter. Requires sun. Hardy to Zone 3. 4. Sunflower. Choose between the perennial helianthus (which you can plant now) or the annual heliopsis which you sow directly in the soil in spring. Personally, I prefer the traditional annual sunflower that produces a bright face, surrounded by bright yellow petals.
Sunflowers dominate my garden from early summer into late fall. I enjoy watching the bees forage like mad when the sunflowers bloom and then later the song birds as they pick away at the mature seeds in September and October. To see a mother finch teaching her young fledglings how to forage a sunflower is an education in itself.
Perennial sunflowers are not nearly as much fun but they are a reliable perennial and that is a bonus. Most varieties grow to about 60 centimetres and all require full sun for best performance. While shopping for helianthus, ask for varieties that produce seeds, not the hybridized cultivars that have had seed-production bred out of them. They bloom for several weeks beginning in midsummer. 5. Serviceberry and crab apples. Both of these winter-hardy shrubs can mature into small trees. Both produce a great show of bloom early in spring, attracting bees and other pollinators.
Serviceberry is a native plant that attracts cedar waxwings mid-summer (and the occasional red squirrel, in my experience) while crab apples tend to hold their fruit until mid- to late winter or early spring, when the softened “apples” are attractive to birds, such as cedar waxwings, blue jays and cardinals.
The other main ingredient in attracting birds to your garden is clean, still water for their drinking and bathing. Consider buying a bird bath heater to keep water open all winter long. Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, Order of Canada recipient, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new bestseller, The New Canadian Garden, published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and on Facebook.