By including native host and nectar plants for butterflies and moths, a bird-friendly yard dramatically increases its Lepidoptera species (and thus caterpillars), therefore feeding the bugs that feed the birds. Here, an eastern tailed-blue butterfly nectars on native rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium)—also a host plant for black swallowtails.
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
—JOHN MUIR, environmental philosopher (1838–1914)
Okay, it’s obvious. Birds rely on plants—heavily. Birds are irrevocably tied to the plants around them and must find adequate vegetation of the right kind in order to survive. We all get that. But when it comes to figuring out the right kinds of plants for the home landscaping, most of us drag our feet at making a switch to what we understand to be “native” gardens and yards.
Furthermore, most of us didn’t start our landscaping or gardens thinking “native.” We planted what we were taught to love. Both of my grandmothers had favorite flowers and shrubs. I’m fortunate to have those same plants, including shrubs my father slipped from his mother’s originals. Some of my grandmothers’ plants came from their mothers, so they’re loaded with sentimental value. I’d never do away with them. My paternal grandmother’s crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia sp.), her very thorny flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa), and her spectacular triple-flowered roadside lily (Hemerocallis fulva) as well as my maternal grandmother’s schnitzelbloomen—cowslip primrose (Primula veris)—hold places of honor in my yard and garden, and my heart. They bring fond memories of my grannies because I remember those plants in their yards where I played. Likewise, my dad’s daffodils and daylilies were all transplanted into my yard after his death. I’ll never get rid of them either. They’re easy care, need no water or fertilizer, and rarely need pruning or separating. And they were Dad’s.
Hummingbirds occasionally visit the crape myrtle and flowering quince, and Northern Cardinals and Brown Thrashers sometimes nest in the quince. Otherwise, my heritage plants mostly just sit there, looking pretty. In short, they fail, of course, to serve a biological purpose.
As I’ve become more knowledgeable in my ripening years, I’m replacing less-sentimental flowers with natives and adding natives where there once was nothing but lawn. (I really don’t like to cut grass anyway.) The transition has been a years-long process and remains a work in progress. Of course, gardening and landscaping are always works in progress. There’s always something we want to add, replace, improve, or reduce. But the more native plants I add, the more birds take up residence with us, treating us with their color and song, rewarding me for the effort, eating our bugs. With a new total of 167 bird species in the yard—not to mention 53 documented butterfly species—I’m grateful for the education others have given me. Now I’m eager to pass it along so that others may share the joy.
For most folks, though, the transition is wracked with fear and trepidation. So, here are the questions I had early on, and I’m betting they’re many of the same questions you have. And for each question, there is a sensible, honest answer that sets the record straight. Let’s go!
Q: What is a native plant? Isn’t “native” just a nice word for “weed”?
A: Native plants are those that grew here prior to 1492. In other words, native plants were here prior to the arrival of settlers toting with them seeds from their favorite can’t-do-without plants from home. Some plant seeds provided a colorful flowering memory of European gardens; others offered an opportunity to grow favored foods and season them with familiar herbs and spices.
That leaves us with the usual assumption: Aren’t natives just plain weeds? Let’s think about that. What’s a weed? Properly, a weed is anything growing where you don’t want it. So even a colorful fall aster (Aster spp.) blossoming in a cornfield, by definition, is a weed. Likewise, cornstalks popping up in a bed of asters, by definition, are weeds. In fact, however, most of those so-called weeds that we love to hate are not native. Think dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) and chickweed (Stellaria media), both native to Europe; bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare), originating from Eurasia and northwestern Africa; Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense), a gift from the Mediterranean; Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) and crabgrass (Digitaria spp.), both from Eurasia—all introduced after 1492. Or, worse, think kudzu (Pueraria montana), from Southeast Asia; Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) and wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei), native to parts of east Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines; and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), native to Great Britain through Europe, Russia, India, and much of Asia—also all introduced. Maybe introduced by accident, but nevertheless introduced.
Vining Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), a noxious nonnative invasive, grows with vigor and is exceedingly difficult to eradicate.
So are native plants weeds? Well, are oak trees weeds? What about flowering dogwood? Who could want a lovelier shrub than bayberry? Or witch hazel? Wouldn’t a cottage garden of black-eyed Susans, columbine, coreopsis, garden phlox, blue sage, and rose mallow, all backed by tall clumps of liatris, make a stunning magazine cover? Native, all of them.
But, of course, some native plants have the reputation of “weeds” because they look rangy, grow tall, flower in a lackluster manner, or tend to be too aggressive for the garden. In fact, many of them wouldn’t be invited into my yard or garden either. On the other hand, many native plants are well behaved, tidy, and quite lovely. We’ll give you the lists later.
Q: Isn’t a so-called native garden about the same thing as a wild thicket, an untended mess?
A: Let’s be honest here. Any garden, untended, will eventually become a wild thicket, regardless of what’s in the garden—native or not. “Native” doesn’t mean “untended,” and only untended gardens become eyesores or wild thickets. I’m always irritated by folks who transition to “native” and use the transition as an excuse for laziness, creating an eyesore for the neighborhood and giving “native” a bad rap.
Q: Natives are sometimes labeled as varieties or cultivars. What’s a variety? What’s a cultivar? Is a variety or a cultivar of a native still native? How are they different from a hybrid? If I want to plant natives to attract birds, does it matter which I plant? I’m confused!
A: Sometimes terminology gets in the way of practicality, and confusion reigns. But since the big voices out there are telling us to plant native to attract birds, let’s figure out what each of the terms—native, variety, cultivar, and hybrid—means. We’ll rank them in terms of their benefit to birds and refer to them as “best choices,” “better choices,” “good choices,” and “poor choices.”
Purists insist that the only truly native plants are those grown from local seed gathered from local native plants. They’re not just those plants that were growing somewhere in the US prior to 1492. Rather, they were then and are now growing in specific locales and are thus native only to those specific locales. It’s worth noting that plants grown from seed are genetically distinct individuals, while plants grown from cuttings are clones. Thus seeds promote genetic diversity and are preferred by purists for that reason. They strengthen the gene pool, so to speak. These seed-grown plants rank as the best choice possible for attracting birds. Unfortunately, finding the obviously limited supplies of these best-choice plants turns into a nearly impossible challenge for most of us. The purists resolve the challenge by raising their own plants by seed.
In a late-July Midwestern native garden, wood-chipped paths wind among, left to right, short-toothed mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) in front of liatris (Liatris spicata) with background compact button bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) and ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius). Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) blooms center front with a wash of black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) behind and right, and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) far right. To keep plants weed-free, shredded leaves mulch the garden.
An alternate and less-strict interpretation of “native” accepts native plants from a broader general region, perhaps miles away but in nearly identical eco-regions. Those plants too pass muster to fit the best choice ranking.
If the challenge of raising your own plants from locally collected seed seems more daunting than you’re likely to pursue, consider purchasing species and their naturally occurring varieties. Most of us do.
Species is the “typical” form of the plant as we know it from the wild. What differentiates it from the previous category is that when you purchase it, you will likely not know the geographic origin of the plant. For example, you might buy purple cone-flower that is of the wild type at a local nursery but the original stock plants may have been collected and grown several states away. Varieties grow in nature without any human interference and are true to type, which means the offspring will share the same characteristics. For example, a population of white-flowering redbud was discovered in nature. Seedlings grown from them produce—true to type—mostly (but perhaps not always) white-flowering redbuds. Still, nothing about these natives was altered through selection or breeding; the genotype remains the same. The variety is merely an unusual natural variation of the standard. Often these “found” varieties are named for some attribute of the plant. We’ll rank species and their varieties as better choices for attracting birds.
Next come cultivars, a shortened term for cultivated variety. Unlike varieties, cultivars have been bred—or cultivated—by plant breeders who intentionally select for desired characteristics that are different from the parent plant. The differences may present as brighter autumn foliage, smaller size, or different flower color than the parent. Consider, for example, purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) again. Let’s say for the sake of argument that a grower planted seed from the standard plant but each year chose seeds only from the plants bearing the most intensely purple blossoms. Using those seeds, the grower then produced the next season’s plants. After years of selection, the grower may come up with a consistently intensely purple-blooming coneflower. That’s a cultivar. The grower selected the plant. Often, however, cultivars propagated by seed don’t come back true to type. As a result, many cultivars are reproduced asexually through cuttings (making them clones). Thus, from an ecological point of view, cultivars lack diversity. Because the genotype remains the same, however, cultivars still rank as good choices for attracting birds.
Be aware, though, that sometimes cultivars have had bred out of them the real reason we birders seek the plant. For instance, a serviceberry cultivar, selected to grow more compactly, was found to produce almost no berries. So cultivars merit caution. Furthermore, don’t let the new term nativar fool you. Plant breeders are trying to tap into the growing interest in native plants. But nativar is just a fancy term for a cultivar of a native—not a variety, not the real thing, and likely little different from any other cultivar. Nativars, like cultivars, may rank as good choices. Some native plant enthusiasts avoid cultivars entirely—by any name.
That takes us to hybrids. In short, a hybrid is the result of cross-pollinating two different plant species, thereby producing a new plant. Many of our vegetable crops and ornamental flowers are the result of artificial hybridization. But nothing is ever simple when we start categorizing plants. Here’s why: Hybridization occurs in the wild as well as purposefully in the garden. Oaks, for instance, hybridize broadly in the wild, sometimes rendering an individual tree almost impossible to pin to a specific species. Because these hybrids are part of a natural process, they can be used in landscape with almost the same level of confidence as the species from which they originate. So a hybrid that occurs in the wild can be rated as better choice.
This brings us to man-made “fancy” hybrids. These are generally developed only for their aesthetic value. If you trace a hybrid’s lineage, you can find out which species were cross-pollinated—and perhaps re-cross-pollinated—to create the hybrid. Sometimes such hybrids are sterile, producing no nectar, no seed, and thus no food value for birds or pollinators. They’re all about appearances. These man-made hybrids rank as poor choices for attracting birds.
A lovely but apparently useless hybrid purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea hybrid) appeared to be sterile: Nothing nectared on its blossoms, and birds never looked for seed at its spent blossoms. And, unlike the standard purple coneflower, it did not survive our mild winter.
In the years before I began focusing on the importance of maintaining a native garden, I used to plant zinnia seed, a plant broadly cultivated and hybridized. While some zinnia species are native to some parts of the US (but more so in Mexico), they’re certainly not native where I live. Still, I loved the flowers, knowing that by July, I’d delight to nectaring butterflies. One spring I discovered a packet of zinnia seeds that advertised multicolored 4-inch-diameter blooms on 4-foot-tall stems. Lovely! I planted the seed; it germinated well, the plants grew tall, and the flowers were bright, a full 4 inches in diameter. I was thrilled. Then I watched. A tiger swallowtail touched down, a spicebush swallowtail flitted through, a spangled fritillary paused, two silver-spotted skippers alit—and every single one left immediately, never to return. The action told me what I needed to know: The hybrids had no nectar. The thrill was gone. But I learned a mean lesson. Yes, the flowers were lovely, and they were obviously developed purely for aesthetics. What a waste of space in my birdscape garden that year. Bummer.
So the difference between a cultivar and a hybrid boils down to parentage. Man-made hybrids cannot be categorized as native plants, even when produced by two native “parents.” But varieties or cultivated varieties that maintain the native plant’s integrity can, at least in a liberal sense and for the purposes of this book, thus be loosely deemed native.
In short, what we’re concerned about here is whether a given plant is a poor, good, better, or best choice for attracting birds to your yard and garden. Although it’s a bittersweet conclusion, what may be a best choice for your personal taste may be a poor choice for the birds. We’ll revisit this matter again later.
Q: My yard is planted with numerous flowering plants and berry producers. They’re not native, but birds sip the nectar and eat the seeds and berries and seem to relish them. So what’s wrong with that?
A: It’s true: Birds sip nectar and eat at least some seeds and berries from introduced species. However, some nonnative plants cause serious harm to both birds and their habitat.
Research by Ohio State University ecologist Amada Rodewald uncovered some surprising effects of nonnative plants. For instance, nonnative Asian honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii)—which produces lovely flowers, dense foliage, and abundant red berries—actually creates an ecological trap for birds. Because nonnative plants leaf out early, they’re attractive to male Northern Cardinals eager to establish early territories. Unfortunately, the situation creates predator targets, most likely because these early nests are easier to find and prey upon. A 20 percent reduction in nesting success is attributed particularly to the introduced Asian honeysuckle.
Sterile Plants and How
THEY CAME TO BE
Why are sterile plants on the market? Why would anyone want them? In short, blame consumer demand. Here’s an explanation:
First, let’s clarify that hybrids aren’t always a bad thing. Horticulturalists may hybridize plants to improve fruiting—maybe for quality, maybe for quantity. Sometimes hybridization intentionally eliminates seeds—think seedless watermelons. Or hybridization may reduce susceptibility to disease, thus improving crop yields. For the produce and other agricultural industries, these qualities, brought about by hybridization, improve crop quality, enhance business, and apparently cause no harm to whoever eats the products.
When it comes to forest and landscape trees, shrubs, and perennials, however, hybridization is typically all about aesthetics. Sadly, perhaps out of ignorance, a good many homeowners consider their landscaping to be pure decoration. To the uninformed, plants should merely look pretty. They forget Mother Nature’s primary purpose for vegetation—to feed and otherwise support critters. In the yard, that translates into landscape plants that support everything from insects to mammals.
If you’re a savvy nursery person and an even more savvy businessperson, however, you’ll jump on the decoration bandwagon and provide homeowners with the showy vegetation they want. Quite simply, you meet consumer demand. And bingo! You sell bunches of nursery products. And make money. After all, why else would you be in business if you weren’t trying to make a living?
While there are a few notable exceptions, most hybrids serve no other function in your birdscaping except to sit there in the garden or yard, look pretty, and demand lots of water, fertilizer, and TLC. They take space away from equally attractive plants that require little or no care and that will provide nectar and nutritious seeds, and simultaneously support insects, insect eggs, and larvae. The notable exceptions have mostly occurred in the wild and end up functioning essentially as natives. Case in point: Red maple and silver maple trees have cross-pollinated in the wild, and the popular result is marketed as Acer × free-manii, accepted now by most as native.
We homeowners tending yards and gardens have a choice. If we choose to request native plants, our consumer demand will affect the marketplace in a very similar way. Nursery staff, horticulturalists, and landscapers all aim to please their customers. And they’re very good at what they do.
But the problem is actually more complicated than nesting success or lack thereof. The rest of the problem has to do with birds’ health. Here’s why:
The brilliance of his red plumage is the measure of a male Northern Cardinal’s health and vigor. All female Northern Cardinals understand that. According to Rodewald, Asian honeysuckle berries “contain abundant pigments but are poor in the protein and fat birds need for energy and fitness.” Thus, red-colored birds like House Finches or Purple Finches that eat Asian honeysuckle berries during molt may wear brilliant plumage, but in fact suffer from poor health. Other nonnative berries, however, lack the abundant pigments, so red-colored birds that dine on them during molt produce plumage more orange than red, thus rendering them, at least in the eyes of potential mates, as less healthy, less vigorous.
Further, as difficult as it may be to believe, some nonnative berries can kill. Nandina, sometimes called heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica), contains cyanide and is a well-documented killer of Cedar Waxwings. There’s little other research about the effects of introduced berry-producing species on birds’ health, but why take the chance?
Perhaps an equally serious problem, though, is that the early leafing out and the dense shade produced by introduced species like Asian honeysuckle is literally destroying native plants. Ecology researcher David Gorchov of Miami University of Ohio reports his findings this way: “Tree seedling survival was reduced by up to 70 percent, and herb growth and reproduction rates plunged by up to 80 percent, primarily because of the shade cast by [Asian] honeysuckle.”
Healthy male Purple Finches (shown here), Northern Cardinals, and House Finches wear brilliant red plumage, and females judge potential mates by their brilliance. Birds that eat certain nonnative berries, which contain significantly poorer nutrition than native berries, may look orangey, even yellowish, thus reducing or perhaps eliminating their opportunity to breed.
Finally, and probably most serious of all, nonnative plants affect insect populations—dramatically. Because warblers and most other songbirds rely on insects, especially caterpillars, for 90 percent of their nourishment during breeding season, it’s significant that nonnative plants do not support as many insects as native plants. So what? Well, entomologist Douglas Tallamy, University of Delaware, provides this startling statistic: A family of chickadees fed 4,800 caterpillars raising a single brood. That in itself is rather astonishing, but think about the ramifications. Without caterpillars, the chickadees couldn’t have raised their babies. And 96 percent of songbirds feed their babies bugs. If nonnative plants don’t support or provide the food birds need to survive, isn’t the result obvious?
And there’s one final kicker that ought to render Asian honeysuckle illegal. It spreads its own poison, effectively rendering soil in the immediate area toxic to any other seeds or sprouts and killing any plants that may be growing nearby. Bad stuff, this Asian honeysuckle. And that’s only one of the nonnatives that can taint your yard.
Q: Well, okay, I admit that I have some seed- and berry-producing plants that birds ignore. Why?
A: That question may best be answered by example. Birds seem not to recognize certain berries as food. For instance, while birds thrive on the red berries of most native winterberry and its cultivars (Ilex verticillata), they completely ignore the yellow berries of the golden winterberry cultivar. Apparently, it’s for a simple reason: Birds don’t recognize yellow berries as food. Likewise, birds leave seeds from some hybrids to rot while they struggle to survive the winter. Seeds from many hybrids are not viable; they have no food value. Somehow, birds seem to understand that. They’re smarter than we are.
In some cases, though, we have to say we simply don’t know why birds eat some things but not others—native or not.
Q: So, how do native plants attract birds to my yard?
A: By now, you no doubt understand that somehow native plants function to feed birds. How is it that native plants feed birds while nonnative plants don’t? Yes, we’ve acknowledged that birds nectar on and consume seeds and berries from some nonnative plants. But the real issue here is about bugs—a term I use loosely to refer to all kinds of insects in all forms: egg, larval, and adult.
A breeding-plumaged male Magnolia Warbler, a morsel in his beak, does what most migrants do: He forages almost entirely for bugs, plucking insects as well as insect eggs and larvae from favored hiding places such as beneath loose bark.
Willow trees (Salix spp.), recognized as moth and butterfly magnets, are thus also warbler magnets, the birds foraging for caterpillars. A Prothonotary Warbler snagged a little green caterpillar among these willows.
Here’s the answer in a sentence: Because 96 percent of songbirds feed their babies bugs, without bugs, we’d have no birds.
And now the explanation: Native bugs, birds, and plants evolved together; and Mother Nature, when left alone, has always had a magical way of making everything balance out. Bugs lived on and reproduced via plants. Birds ate a hefty portion of the eggs, larvae, and adult bugs. And plants were pollinated by or reseeded by both bugs and birds. It’s a handy and reliable balance of nature. Then we started messing around, introducing bugs like the Japanese beetle, emerald ash borer, gypsy moth, Asian praying mantis, cabbage white butterfly, and several kinds of aphids, sawflies, whiteflies, and beetles. They didn’t evolve here, so they mostly have no predators to keep them in balance. Then we made a bigger mess by introducing plants like multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), native to China, Japan, and Korea; garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), native to Eurasia and northwestern Africa; water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), from the Amazon Basin; English ivy (Hedera helix), from Eurasia; tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), native to China and Taiwan; and autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata), from eastern Asia. When that happened, we threw things out of balance big time. With all these vigorous nonnative plants encroaching on and replacing natives, many native bugs had trouble finding native plants on which to feed, lay their eggs, and grow caterpillars.
So why don’t the bugs just use nonnative plants for their dinner tables and nurseries? Because nonnative plants have such a dramatically different chemical composition than natives, they not only often can’t support a good many of our native bugs, but sometimes actually poison them. In short, the vast majority of native bugs can’t eat nonnative plants—or live on them. Then the plants are gloriously advertised as plants that are “insect resistant.” We need to add that they’re also “bird resistant”—perfect for keeping birds out of the yard.
So if you actually want birds in your yard, you’ll need to support bugs in your yard—and that requires native plants.
Q: But I’ve always been taught to keep bugs out of the yard and garden—for all kinds of personal and aesthetic reasons. Now I’m being told that to feed the birds, I must first feed the bugs. I’m a bit uncomfortable about that. How do you respond?
A: Well, to put it simply, it turns out we’ve been taught to do the wrong things! More and more prestigious organizations have confirmed the error and are trying to help us change bad habits, with the National Audubon Society, Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, American Bird Conservancy, and American Birding Association all pointing the way to saving birds’ lives.
Here’s why: First, not all bugs are created equal. Some bugs are indeed serious pests, but less than 1 percent of bugs found in the yard and garden cause any serious harm. Second, most bugs are actually beneficial. Remember Mother Nature’s balance-of-nature thing. Third, when birds discover the bounty in your yard, they’ll join you—and eat those bugs. Then, finally, your yard will serve as a lifeline for migrating birds, making up in some small way for the major loss of habitat we’ve yanked from birds’ use for survival.
A spider gleaned from the foliage makes a quick but high-protein meal for a female American Redstart.
Think of it this way: Aphids eat plants. Ladybug larvae eat aphids. And birds eat ladybugs. One simple example we can all understand. Balance of nature.
And here’s my personal take on the entire issue: I’ve not used insecticides in my yard in over 25 years, but nevertheless, I have virtually no problem with bugs. My yard list of 167 bird species explains why.
Q: What is a plant that “supports bugs”? How does that plant then feed birds?
A: A plant that supports bugs provides insects a place to live and feed during all parts of their lives. Initially, of course, bugs need suitable places to lay their eggs. Each insect species chooses the site most likely to perpetuate the species, but many choose some specific plant part on which to raise their families, like under tree bark, under leaves, or maybe drilled into stalks and stems. These typically well-hidden eggs become the target for many birds’ lunches. Nuthatches, for instance, forage upside down on trees to best see the eggs hidden in bark. Downy Woodpeckers know to drill open the galls that bulge on goldenrod stalks to lunch on the gallfly inside.
Of course, birds don’t find all the eggs, so when the remaining eggs ultimately hatch, the larval form needs a place to feed, perhaps on leaves, stems, roots, nectar, seed, or some form of fruit/berries. This insect form also becomes a lunch target for birds. As a rule of thumb, most songbirds feed their babies caterpillars, an insect larval form. To test the rule of thumb, watch common backyard nesters like Eastern Bluebirds, House Wrens, or Carolina Wrens carry meals to their nests.
Native goldenrod species (Solidago spp.) attract bugs to their fall blossoms, making the plants especially beneficial to fall migrants, including this female Common Yellowthroat with a bug in her beak.
White-breasted Nuthatches forage upside down along tree trunks, the better to find hidden insect eggs and larvae other birds miss. The foraging technique obviously worked for this bird.
Again assuming birds don’t find all the larvae, when the larval form becomes an adult, that critter also needs specific food supplies, including a vast range of delectables like nectar, plant sap, roots, grass, and other insects, including those insects’ eggs and larvae. These adults also become part of a bird’s menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
So plants support bugs that in turn feed birds.
Q: Do all native plants attract birds? How do I know what ones do?
A: All native plants somehow fit into Mother Nature’s balanced plan, but of course we can’t plant everything in our yards. So in this book we’ve attempted to identify the native plants that best serve birds (and bugs) to provide the lifeline birds so desperately need.
Q: Replacing plants can be expensive. Are native plants more expensive than introduced plants?
A: Unlike most introduced species sold in pots at nurseries and big-box stores, native plants come in additional stages of growth. Yes, you can buy sizeable plants in sizeable containers, but you can save money by buying plugs, usually small plants in individual cells, some as small as 1½ by 2 by 4 inches. Typically, plugs are sold by the flat, thus providing more plants for less money. Additionally, in spring, you may consider bare-rooted stock, or even seeds. Depending on your need for instant gratification, purchasing these smaller plants, even in large quantities, saves money.
But to directly answer your question: No, native plants tend to cost about the same as introduced species, assuming you’re choosing similarly sized pots and/or plants.
Q: I live in a tidy neighborhood where the landscaping is lovely. Like my neighbors, I like a tidy, formal look. If I plant natives, won’t I have to compromise my own aesthetics, become the eyesore of the neighborhood, and upset my neighbors?
A: That’s an excellent question and one that almost everyone considering native gardens asks. The short and sweet answer is that native gardens can be just as tidy and formal as any other. Folks who think planting a native garden is an excuse for not tending the garden make the rest of us look bad.
But here’s the rub: Not every native plant that birds love is a tidy, well-behaved plant. The aim of this book is to suggest natives (“best” choices) or their native varieties or cultivars (“better” or “good” choices) that not only attract birds but look good in landscapes. Since yard size determines which plants will best serve your landscaping purposes, we’ve categorized the plants we suggest according to where they’ll best perform—in yards and gardens from super-sized to pots-and-patios.
Q: What’s different about the look of a yard or garden planted with natives and one planted with introduced species?
A: If you like a yard or garden crammed full of blue and pink blossoms, for instance, you choose natives the same way you’d choose nonnative species—by blossom color. On the other hand, if you like a yard or garden entirely in shades of green—trees, shrubs, ferns, vines—again, you’d choose natives the same way you’d choose nonnative species—by their foliage. Granted, natives may not provide colors as varied or intense as do nonnative or hybrid plants, but if you plant natives, you can instead enjoy the color of birds!
Q: What can I do to make my native yard or garden look more perfectly groomed than do some other native landscapes I’ve seen?
A: You’ll use the same techniques to make your native yard or garden look classy as you would for any other yard or garden. Maintaining carefully edged paths; adding sculpture accents, garden art, and benches; setting off plantings with lovely sections of fencing or other inorganic borders; tucking in ornate trellises or elegant birdbaths; structuring a stonework terrace or rock garden; adding an accent boulder; and establishing plantings that reach a variety of heights—all can make any garden more formal, native or not. Again, planting native is not an excuse for an untended eyesore.
A native garden can be as lovely as a nonnative garden. This early-July garden displays three washes of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), one partially hidden by the trellis, along with two masses of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), one partially shown far left, another far right. Golden common yarrow (Achillea filipendulina ‘Gold Plate’) and blanketflower (Gillardia spp.), front right; white-blooming narrowleaf mountain mint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium), middle right; and the towering giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima) fill in with interest. The trellis supports crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) with upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) standing tall, back left, and common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and nonnative fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), back right. A native catalpa-wood bench serves as a companion for a rustic fence of the same wood and invites visitors to amble the winding wood-chipped paths and sit a spell.
Q: How do I arrange native plants in my yard or garden to host the most birds?
A: Birds hang out in places that provide ready food, safe shelter, moving water, and—in season—secure places to nest and raise young. For years, people have focused only on feeders and feed to attract birds; of course, we’re now professing that plants provide the ultimate bird feeders—nectar, sap, seeds, berries, and bugs.
But there’s more. Folks who consciously set out to evaluate the availability of avian shelter in their yards may suffer tally shock. Up high, for instance, birds need an escape from soaring hawks; and down low, they need a place to tuck in when ground-level threats pursue. Birds visiting a birdbath need shelter within several feet of the bath where they can safely preen and dry off, enjoying protection during the few minutes they can’t fly well or have become distracted by the task at hand. You see the general idea: They need dense, they need high, they need low. And if the distance between spots of shelter is more than 20 feet, they need shelter to break up the distance.
In short, think drifts of perennial plants, not twos and threes. Think a mass of shrubs, not ones and twos. Think a little grove of trees, not a single specimen. Of course, many yards can’t accommodate drifts, masses, and groves, so approach it this way: Instead of planting landscape in the lawn, plant little patches of lawn in the landscape. In other words, reduce lawn to a bare minimum—or to none at all. It’s useless to birds—maybe even toxic if Mr. Green Grass dumps pesticides on it.
Q: Using 50 as a hypothetical number, would it be better to plant one plant each of 50 perennials or plant 10 plants each of five species? Or some other combination?
A: Instead of aiming for a “zoo” of plants—one or two plants of 50 different kinds—think in terms of masses. You’ll best attract birds (and bugs) by planting washes of a few species; so consider setting out 25 perennial plants of two species that bloom at different times—maybe in a mixed mass. Even 10 plants of five species each would, after a few seasons, create a decent wash of color since most native plants will multiply over time. Just choose these masses according to bloom time in your region. That not only varies the appearance of your yard or garden but also keeps pollinators happy over a longer period of time. As seeds ripen, the birds also enjoy an extended buffet. Having only a plant or two of a few given species, however, may mean that nothing—bees, insects, or birds—finds the hidden gems.
Plants arrayed in masses like these fall-blooming New England asters (Aster novae-angliae) attract more birds—and butterflies and insects—than do only two or three plants of a kind.
Q: My lot is tiny (or I have only a pots-and-patio place), so I can’t plant washes and masses of trees, bushes, and perennials. How can I possibly plant native?
A: One simple solution for expanding habitat space without buying more land is going vertical, thus expanding birdscape surface. Shrub layers work best for attracting birds in small lots because shrubs are where most birds nest, find shelter, and roost in winter. Even folks who can offer nothing more than a window box or a couple of containers on a 10th-floor balcony can plant natives that help foraging birds. We’ve included in this reference lists of plants that will serve every situation. With the right perennials, for instance, your 10th-floor balcony can host humming-birds on a regular basis!
Q: Planting native sounds like additional work. Is it?
A: Actually, planting and tending natives is less work than doing the same for nonnatives. Native plants rarely need water—they’re accustomed to the regional growing conditions. Natives don’t need—or want—fertilizers. In fact, it’s easy to burn plants when fertilizing adjoining lawn (maybe another reason to get rid of it). Natives don’t need spraying—especially since you’re hoping they support the bugs birds need. Natives don’t need deadheading—especially since you want birds to enjoy the seeds. Natives don’t need pruning—unless your yard or garden space demands it.
Every plant helps! Even if you can plant only two small trees, such as a male and female American holly (Iles opaca) or one of their compact cultivars, you will support an amazing number of birds, including American Robins, desperate for winter berries.
In short, natives provide more advantages than nonnatives with less work.
Q: How are native plants better for the environment?
A: Let’s answer this question by first looking at the effect of lawns on the environment. According to a recent NASA study done in collaboration with Mountain West, US lawns blanket about 63,000 square miles, about the size of Texas, making it the largest irrigated crop by area in the country. Unfortunately, it’s a crop that produces nothing that we can eat or wear. To birds, lawn is the second-most-desertlike place on earth—second only to pavement. The study further determined that 50 to 75 percent of the total residential water use goes to the outdoors, mostly for irrigating lawns.
In 2002 a Harris Survey estimated that homeowners spent $28.9 billion on professional lawn care. That number has likely doubled by now. While a well-manicured lawn can function as a carbon sink, the advantage is typically lost by the use of fertilizers and pesticides that pollute runoff and by the use of gasoline-powered lawnmowers, weed whackers, and leaf blowers that, according to the EPA, account for 5 percent of summertime air pollution. Audubon.org claims that homeowners use 10 times more fertilizer per acre on lawns than farmers use on crops, thus compounding runoff pollution. And, finally, if homeowners bag grass clippings and send them to the landfill, that’s another environmental red flag.
Many states, however, are encouraging homeowners to replace lawns with alternatives, namely native plants. Eliminating lawns reduces the carbon produced and the water used to maintain them. Natives that replace lawns need no fertilizer, little or no water, no pesticides, and no mowing or blowing. The landscape-instead-of-lawn scenario makes good environmental sense, for humans and, by the way, for birds. As the National Audubon Society notes on Audubon.org, “Native gardens also help birds be as strong as possible in the face of the climate threat—by providing food, shelter and protection. Native plant patches—no matter how small—can help bird populations be more resilient to the impacts of a warming world.”
Q: Where do I find native plants? How do I know they’re native?
A: Finding native plants is admittedly a challenge in some parts of the country. When nursery folks realize, however, that there’s a demand, they’ll carry more and more native species. Until then, check with your local and state native plant societies (every state has at least one) or go online to find a reputable supplier.
Q: Okay, I’m convinced. So, in order to include plants that support the most insects and feed the most birds but still look terrific in my landscaping, what should I plant?
A: That’s what the rest of the book is about!