The Fast Track to Wildlife Gardening

Some time ago, in the article "The Tree Has Many Branches", I wrote about the different stages in developing a fully realized wildlife-friendly garden. Certainly developing a 'mature' garden with trees and shrubs takes time. However, there is a lot that can be done in a much shorter time, even one growing season, to make your garden much more wildlife-friendly.

But first a word about technique. Making a garden wildlife-friendly does not just involve the types of plants grown. The way you garden can also be extremely important. For example, keeping a garden highly manicured by deadheading flowers may deprive birds of excellent food resources in the form of seed. Allowing a few 'weeds' to remain around the edges of a garden may increase your garden's appeal to butterflies. Above all, if you really want to hang out an invitation to birds and butterflies do not spray pesticides or herbicides.

There are many plants commonly available, annual and perennial, that attract birds and butterflies. Many of these are also appealing and even useful to people. Let's begin with herbs. Every garden should include herbs if only for their culinary uses. However, many of them are also magnets for birds and butterflies. Hummingbirds, for example, are attracted to sage, pineapple sage and bee balm. Herbs such as catnip and sage, when allowed to go to seed, provide food for birds including goldfinches. Butterflies, particularly skippers, will appreciate seeing sage, thyme, hyssop and borage in your garden.

Many common annual flowers provide nectar for butterflies including marigolds (choose single flower varieties), zinnias and petunias. Here gardeners have quite a wide range to choose from. Just a partial list of plants suitable to attract butterflies would include yarrow, butterfly weed, butterfly bush, aster, coreopsis, coneflower, blackeyed-susans, sunflowers, liatris and verbena. Flowering plants that attract hummingbirds include columbine, jewelweed, cardinal flower, hibiscus, trumpet creeper and four-o'-clocks.

Don't overlook the need to provide host plants for the larval stages of butterflies. I would recommend that you become familiar with the needs of butterflies in your part of the world. There are many good resources. One that I refer to often for my area is Noah's Garden by Sarah Stein. In general, many quite ordinary plants such as carrot, parsley, fennel, dill, chervil, angelica, hollyhock, rue and lovage act as food plants for a number of different species of butterfly.

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