Bird Friendly Gardening

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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, rolling it like a carpet, and then going after the roots with the pick axe and shovel. Even a scrap of root will grow into a new plant, but mulching heavily over it can at least make the roots easier to pull.

Next we put in a bird bath we picked up at SummerWinds in Palo Alto, and added birdhouses for several of birds we noticed in our garden most often: Bewicks Wrens, Chestnut Backed Chickadees (pictured here), and Western Bluebirds.


Then we planted a native Blue Elderberry next to it. In that same bed we planted native Hollyleaf Cherry, Beach Strawberry, Roger's Red Grape on trellises along the garage. We created a gravel path that doubles as a 'swale' in heavy rains and makes it easy to access the plants for maintenance. 


In a warm spot nearby we planted Apricot Mallows and Island Mallow, which attracted many caterpillars that provided food for baby chickadees in our new birdhouse.

In another exposed spot we planted Santa Cruz Buckwheat, and Kannah Creek Sulphur Buckwheat to attract even more insects (baby bird food!) and seeds for adult birds. 


Another bed with dappled shade and low water needs is planted with Toyon, low mounding Mt. Vision Coffeeberry (pictured below at East Bay Wilds) and Mendocino Reed Grass.  While our grass is still getting established, we hope that someday it looks like the ones we saw at the Woodside Library Native Garden, a public garden nearby that is open during library hours.


Further down toward the seasonal creek, where the ground is more prone to dampness, we are growing a small grove of Red Twig Dogwood and Pacific Dogwood underplanted with native Dog Violet. Again, the inspiration was from the Woodside Library native garden, its mature dogwood is pictured here:



Finally, we're including nectar plants for hummingbirds. These include native sages, California Fuchsia, Pink Flowered Currant, Monkey Flower, and various manzanitas. While nectar is important and provides about 20% of an adult hummingbird's diet, 80%
of their diet comes from protein they get from small insects such as aphids, spiders, and gnats. Since native plants provide the ideal ecosystems for these insects, we believe our hummingbirds will be well provided for.




We were finished just in time for the spring Growing Natives Garden Tour (this was the April 2024 one), and had 139 visitors come through! If you want to learn more about that fun garden tour, the site is here: https://bit.ly/GrowingNatives-Tour

We also gain a lot of inspiration visiting native gardens on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour in the East Bay: 

We also hosted visitors as part of the Native Plant Resource Teams "Choose Your Own Adventure" which focused on 'bird friendly gardening'. Just in case you're in the area, here's a description of that Adventure, and some public gardens you can visit in the mid-Peninsula just south of San Francisco.

Finally, here is a slide deck for a presentation that both Brian and I have given at libraries and online about bird friendly gardening. It includes links to resources at the end that many people have found useful:

Wishing you success in creating your own bird-friendly garden!

All images by Jennifer Dirking (CC-BY-NC) except birds by Alan Schmierer (Public Domain)




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