Bird Friendly Gardening
In the winter of 2024, we embarked on our latest native plant project: creating "Birdland" in the backyard. No, not the jazz club but perhaps something just as musical as one! Our dream is to plant every kind of native California fruit, nut, berry and seed we can possibly fit into our small suburban backyard, which backs onto a seasonal creek. Adult birds thrive on these plants. Even more importantly, the native plants feed insects, including caterpillars, that feed baby birds, and many other species besides. Living in California, one of the most biodiverse places on earth, there are so many native plants to choose from (over 8,000). In order to grow the plants that feed our local ecosystems, we entered our zip code in Calscape.org and 580 plant options popped up. We took a look at the plant options, and the various areas in our garden and made a plan for each. The first area next to the garage had a lot of ivy, so we tackled it by chopping the ivy at the base, roll