Landscape Gardening with Chickens
SECRETS TO A BEAUTIFUL CHICKEN YARD
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, IT IS POSSIBLE
to enjoy a beautifully landscaped chicken yard complete with flowers and plants! I know this because I have been landscaping my chicken yard for years.
If I can landscape my chicken yard absent any knowledge of proper gardening practices, anyone can! Shelly is a Silver Spangled Hamburg hen.
My credentials? I am a fifth-generation brown thumb gardener and homicidal horticulturist with a keen eye for the obvious and an unhealthy obsession with outwitting my chickens. If I can landscape my chicken yard absent any knowledge of proper gardening practices, anyone can!
Before we began keeping chickens, our backyard was a hilly, wet, clay-laden, mosquito-infested area that we never used. When the chickens arrived and beat back the mosquito population, the chicken yard became a space we could enjoy. I’ve added landscape elements because I enjoy the process and the final product, but if my chickens eat flowers or trample plants, I don’t get too worked up about it—I always remember that there would not have been anything beautiful in that area if it wasn’t for them.
The following methods and strategies have worked with my flock, but all are subject to being discredited by any chicken at any time!
Toxic Stuff and Common Sense
The question I am most frequently asked about gardening in the chicken yard is: which plants are toxic to chickens? The short answer is: I don’t worry about it. Seriously. I do not landscape my yard based on concerns about toxicity. I have kept any number of plants in my chicken yard that routinely appear on laundry lists of plants-possibly-toxic-to-chickens, namely: boxwood, green onions, Nicotiana (ornamental tobacco), parsley, and sweet potato vines.
Why? For whatever reasons, chickens generally avoid eating plants that are poisonous to them or simply don’t consume them in quantities sufficient to cause harm. Flocks that are primarily confined and don’t forage regularly may not be as savvy or selective as free-rangers, so don’t place plantings in their chicken run that you wouldn’t eat yourself—if in doubt, keep it out. Without question, chicken keepers do far more unintended harm to their flocks by feeding them incorrectly and offering excessive treats and kitchen scraps than by accidental poisoning, so I suggest saving the worry about toxic plants for the clear and present danger to chicken health: improper diet.
For whatever reasons, chickens generally avoid eating plants that are poisonous to them or simply don’t consume them in quantities sufficient to cause harm. Flocks that are primarily confined and don’t forage regularly may not be as savvy or selective as free-rangers, so don’t place plantings in their chicken run that you wouldn’t eat yourself.
Plant Selection
Local garden centers and nurseries sell plants that perform well in their growing zone, so shop locally. Some of the least expensive plants are often the most durable, colorful, and visually impactful. I have had excellent luck every year with varieties of mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, vinca vine, sweet potato vine, ornamental grass, and spikes. Shop for perennials at the end of summer when prices are greatly reduced and the plants nearly dead. Plant them immediately, knowing that they’ll be back next spring.
Don’t buy ten flats of any variety you love hoping the chickens will leave them alone. Buy a few, see how it goes, and if the plants are still alive in a few weeks, add more. Trying to predict which plants or flowers your chickens might eat is largely an exercise in futility. The only way to know with certainty what they will eat is to experiment with different varieties. Things some birds eat, sit on, dig up, or trample, other birds might completely ignore. Things a flock ignore one summer could prove this year’s favorite salad bar topping. Hostas are a good example—some years my chickens eat certain varieties like potato chips, and other years they go untouched. There’s no rhyme or reason to when or which varieties chickens will eat, but if they’re perennials, don’t worry about it—they’ll grow back next year.
My favorite plant for durability, hardiness, rate of growth, shape, movement, and being totally chicken-proof is an ornamental grass known as Miscanthus. There is nothing my chickens (or I) have ever been able to do to kill it. It requires no attention and is cold hardy, heat tolerant, and happy in any soil type but does insist on a moderate amount of sunlight. Miscanthus also provides color, texture, shade, and interest to the chicken yard all year long. Chickens can dig to China among the root balls yet Miscanthus thrives. That is my kind of plant! I simply chop them down to the ground every spring and they return in their full glory by early summer. When the bases get too wide and the middle begins dying, I divide them with an axe and use them to beautify other parts of the yard.
Use Containers and Garden Up
Wherever possible, use container plantings in the chicken yard. Things planted in the ground are enormously tempting to dig into and walk on, but it’s slightly less convenient for chickens to uproot or trek through a potted plant—not impossible, just less convenient. I get a kick out of using creative containers in the chicken yard. The higher up I plant things, the less likely they are to be destroyed by my feathered wrecking crew.
Autumn in the chicken yard.
Preservation
Invariably, the flock will want to “help” during planting. Freshly disturbed earth is very enticing to chickens and nothing is quite as upsetting as finding that the flock has uprooted new plantings. It’s not that your chickens hope to kill your new plants immediately as much as they appreciate someone priming the ground for a worm fest.
To deter unwanted excavation, surround new plantings with pavers, bricks, or rocks. This will give them a fighting chance to take root. It works like a charm, but be forewarned: if the rocks are removed, the moist, wormy soil underneath will only attract unwanted attention. Another strategy is to upturn some soil in a location away from the work area to distract them. Sometimes they fall for it; other times, not so much.
There are some areas in my chicken yard that I do not want redesigned for me by my birds. We have mulch as far as the eye can see behind our coops, but invariably, my chickens would rather forage and dust bathe in the mulch adjacent to the lawn. To limit this behavior and the amount of mulch requiring raking and relocation, I bury hardware cloth just beneath the mulch in a few select areas. When they realize they can’t get past the welded wire, they resign and move along. If you use this strategy, bend under any sharp edges of the hardware cloth to protect the birds’ feet from lacerations.
The Lawn
I am often asked how my lawn remains lush in the face of fifty or so marauding chickens. I really don’t know for sure, but plenty of shade helps. Broadcasting feed, scratch, or other treats onto the lawn is begging for overzealous dethatching, so don’t throw edibles on the lawn.
It is possible to repair damaged areas of the lawn without banishing the flock to Siberia for the duration. Reseed only if absolutely necessary. Place a piece of hardware cloth on top of the naked spot and let it grow tall before removing the wire.
Hardscaping
Nonliving items are a good way to add color and interest to the chicken yard. A brick or fieldstone walkway near the coop is always attractive, as are rock walls and beds filled with pea stones or river rocks. Mr. Chicken Chick and I sourced most of the rocks for our rock walls from the woods behind the coops.
I am especially fond of decorating the yard with repurposed, natural, found, and otherwise-free objects like logs, branches, hay bales, grapevines, watering cans, galvanized steel, wagons, barbed wire, buckets, old wagon wheels, wooden ladders … the possibilities are endless!
I am especially fond of decorating the yard with repurposed, natural, found, and otherwise-free objects.
Wherever possible, use container plantings in the chicken yard. Partridge Cochin, Bertha.