As we retreat from the chill of outdoors to the comfort of the couch, it’s time to start thinking about next year’s garden. How’s your winter bird life? Could it be better? If you’d like to attract a greater variety of birds than you’re getting now, consider adding plants next year which will naturally supplement their diet with nutritious seeds and berries. And, find out what not to plant.
Most of us who love birds employ feeders, of course, which I’ll cover in another article. Along with the feeders, it’s very satisfying to also provide natural food and bird “amenities” like a safe place to congregate, take cover and get a drink. By replicating a bird’s preferences as best you can, you greatly increase the chances that bird will seek out your offerings.
The first winter in our townhouse, when our yard had no bird-friendly plantings, our feeder attracted just five species: English sparrows, house finches, jays, cardinals and starlings. Today we regularly attract 25 – 30 species at some point during the winter.
Seed-bearing Plants
An easy way to attract seed foragers is to allow late-season (fertile) flowers set seed. Sunflowers, coneflowers, thistles, asters, grasses, joe-pye weed, even zinnias and cosmos produce seed for over-wintering birds if not dead-headed and left to stand.
The American Goldfinch is probably the most frequently observed forager of standing vegetation in our area. They will land right on the stalks to pluck the seeds from the ripening flowerheads. White-crowned sparrows, house finches and pine siskins also forage in standing thickets. So do purple finches, but they’re now fairly uncommon in the ‘burbs, where house finches out-compete them.
Chickadees and titmice will forage in standing foliage, but tend to wait until other foods are scarce before doing so. Juncos, doves, cardinals, grackles and sparrows like to scavenge on the ground rather than from standing stalks. If you can set aside a spot near the house where a few native perennials can go to seed, it will be easier to observe them. (Of course they all scavenge under feeders, too, where the pickings are a lot easier!) Unfortunately, most hybrid perennials and non-native cultivars in our gardens don’t produce seed at all.
So, what to plant?
Native species and so-called “nativars” are best for producing seed. “Nativar” is just a fancy name for a cultivar that retains the best characteristics of the wild species in an improved form. A good example is Echinacea purpurea Magnus. (You can tell it’s a nativar because its Latin name includes Genus + species: Echinacea + purpurea, before the cultivar name, Magnus).
Of course, not all of us can just let our plots go to seed willy-nilly. Gardeners understand there’s a difference between letting plants set seed in a controlled way and the wildly profligate thugs like goldenrod and thistle that can easily take over if allowed to. To the uninitiated, all standing vegetation looks the same: Weedy! Thus, some townships and HOAs ban standing vegetation over a certain height when it’s “out of season” so be aware of your area’s rules.
Luckily, discreet plantings tucked into corners of otherwise tidy gardens seldom become targets of the weed police. If you have a reasonably secluded spot, try letting a few perennials set seed and see what happens. Mulch will suppress most unwanted volunteers, and you can always cut the stalks down if the birds ignore them.
In my garden, goldfinches start foraging on spent coneflowers as early as July and continue right through October or until the seeds are mostly gone. Sparrows, house finches, doves and juncos join later. By early November, everything’s been pretty well picked over. By then I know I can chop the dead materal to the ground without depriving them of a snack. (Our HOA doesn’t appreciate standing vegetation over winter.)
But if you have the space and freedom, do consider letting some native plants stand all winter, as the birds will diligently pick out every last seed once other sources dwindle. Here are some suggestions.
Top Seed-Bearing Choices
- Coneflower (Echinacea) Three single-flowering, free seeding cultivars: Echinacea purpurens; Echinacea purpurens Fragrant Angel; Echinacea purpurens Magnus. More on Echinaceas in general here.
- Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) – This is the straight species, a short-lived perennial. Rudbeckis fulgida is also good. Other cultivars may not produce much seed.
- Anise Hyssop (Agastache rugosa; A. foeniculum) Lots of cultivars to choose from. I especially like Blue Fortune, which is a cross between two native species and quite hardy. Blue Boa and Ava, a tall deep pink, are also very good. In summer, hummingbirds love all the hyssops.
- Sunflowers (Helianthus) Various annual cultivars well-known for seed production. Some get huge! To reduce bulk and weight once they’ve set seed, cut off and hang the intact heads for the birds to glean. Just poke a hole in each head and thread with sturdy wire; you can then compost the rest of the plant.
- Globe thistle (Echinops bannicata) Besides eating the seeds, goldfinches sometimes use the down to line their nests in summer. A better choice than actual weedy thistles!
For naturalized areas
- Joe Pye-weed (Eupatorium/ Eutrochium; the genus recently changed, so it’s under both names.) I find the larger native/nativar forms are best for songbirds. There are several to choose from. These need room so plan accordingly.
- Mountain Fleece or Bistort (Persicaria amplexcaulis) A good choice for meadows or low areas in large yards. This plant can become unruly and flop if it’s in too much shade, so put it in a sunny spot. Deer may browse the foliage.
- Gayfeather (Liatris scariosa) Plant the tall native form, either white or purple, not the short hybrid Kobold if you want seeds for birds.
- Little Bluestem (Schizachryium scoparium) Native bunchgrass. Seed output is modest; you will need multiples for decent output.
- Side oats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) Another native bunchgrass with pretty, dangling seed capsules on graceful stems. I haven’t planted this myself, but I’d love to if I had the room.
Fruit and Berry Producers
Adding late-season berries and fruit will draw in a much wider variety of birds than seed-bearing plants alone, particularly birds that migrate or travel in flocks. I once watched a flock of cedar waxwings completely strip my winterberry and pyracantha of all fruit in just a few hours! These plants are vital food sources when the snow flies, especially for insectivores who rarely or never eat seeds. Berry lovers include jays, waxwings, cardinals, bluebirds, grosbeaks, woodpeckers, hermit thrushes, mockingbirds, nuthatches, flickers and robins.
Today, my small suburban garden sports viburnum, cherry laurel, Schip laurel and holly, all of which produce fruit.
My Japanese barberry Orange Rocket produces very few to no berries because it is a near-sterile cultivar. I planted it for the foliage, but birds seek out what berries they find nonetheless. Unfortunately Pennsylvania has banned the sale of on most Japanese barberries because the older cultivars reseed invasively, so I can’t recommend it. But our native barberry isn’t a problem. Either way, birds love it.
Of course, many garden-worthy trees and shrubs produce fruit in summer, feeding a whole different group of birds which I’m not discussing here. Nor am I covering brambles, elderberries, mulberries, or cultivated blueberries and raspberries. This article covers only fruit and berries that persist into winter, since that’s the season we’re focused on here.
If you only have room for one or two plants and are looking for something showy, a coralberry or beautyberry might be just the thing. Both are self-fertile and you will get fruit on just one or two plants. The berries on both will persist after leaf fall.
If space isn’t a limiting factor, any of the suggestions below will also work. Keep in mind winterberry, holly and bayberry are all dioecious, meaning they are separately sexed. So, you will need at least two female plants and one male to get any fruit. Make sure you obtain the correct male for the female of your choice. Both sexes must bloom at the same time to ensure good pollination, and the males are not interchangeable. Ask before buying or better yet, research your cultivar ahead of time. (If the nursery salesperson is wrong, you will waste years waiting in vain for berries. It happened to me.)
Top Fruit-Bearing Choices
- Viburnun nudum Winterthur – Light pink berry clusters ripen denim-blue amidst red and burgundy fall foliage — beautiful! White flowers in spring and clean summer foliage makes this a terrific shrub for any garden. A slow grower reaching 5 – 6 feet tall. Plant several for best fruit set or with a related cultivar, Brandywine. Bluebirds love these.
- Schip Laurel Prunus laurocerasus Schipka – Inconspicuous black berries form in summer on this rhododendron-like evergreen. Needs full to part sun. This robin magnet is usually picked clean by early October but some may persist into early winter. Gets about 6 – 12 feet tall and 4 feet wide in our area.
- Winterberry, Ilex verticullata. Red Sprite (female, 2 – 4 ft.) is a dwarf form and fits well into most yards but berry production is unreliable. Others:(5 – 8 ft) Berry Poppins, Winter Red, and SparkleBerry are larger but bear heavily. Winter Gold has yellow berries. Males: Mr. Poppins, Southern Gentleman, Apollo, Jim Dandy. Be sure to ask which male you need for your female cultivar of choice. Remember they are not interchangeable!
- Firethorn, Pyracantha – Red, orange or yellow berries depending on cultivar, borne in huge, dense clusters. Stiff branches sport wicked thorns. Grows 6 – 16 feet high, but is easily kept shorter with judicious pruning. Works great as a hedge, espaliered against a sunny fence or building, or in back of a border. Vigorous and trouble-free. Cedar waxwings adore firethorn.
- Beautyberry Callicarpa Americana Pearl Glam – Purple berries and bright yellow fall foliage makes for an eye-popping combo. Other cultivars are available, some with white berries. But, deer love this plant too, unfortunately.
- Coralberry Symphoricarpos orbiculatus – Candy Sensation and Proud Berry are two commonly available cultivars. Showy, deep pink berries cover this 3-foot-high shrub. The fruit is inedible to us (and toxic to fish) but the birds love it. Perfect for a shady or woodsy spot. Deer resistant!
- Highbush cranberry, Viburnum opulus var. Americanum Aiton. A great native choice that looks good anywhere. Red edible berries are borne in clusters amid red-orange fall color. Creamy white flowers in spring. Grows taller than it is wide, between 8 – 12 feet high. And, the fruit is edible if a bit meh.
For naturalized areas
- American bittersweet, Celastrus scanden – This is NOT the invasive Asian form, which should not be planted. Orange two-toned berries cling to a twining vine after the leaves drop. Very decorative in arrangements; berries are poisonous to people, but loved by the birds. May modestly reseed.
- Black Chokeberry, Aronia melanocarpa – A multi-stemmed shrub about 6 -8 feet tall, good for wet or boggy conditions. Black berries with red foliage in fall. Another bird favorite. Prune off any suckers or use as an informal hedge.
- Cut-leaf Staghorn Sumac, Rhus typhina Dissecta Laciniata – A small nativar tree that’s prettier than the wild form, but may sucker. Upright burgundy drupes stand out from lacy, light orange foliage. Both the wild and the nativar forms work.
- Northern bayberry, Myrica pensylvanica – Dioecious. Waxy pale gray berries and aromatic foliage; used in candlemaking in Colonial times. Bayberry is an important food for game birds like quail, grouse, turkeys and many songbirds. Bayberry tolerates poor or sandy soil, salt, heat, humidity and exposed sites. Bushy and attractive, this hardy shrub is woefully under-utilized in suburban settings. A great choice for today’s increasingly challenging climate extremes.
Fall fruit-bearing trees
- American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) – For the motivated gardener looking for a wildlife magnet and a fruit tree with presence, you can’t beat American persimmon. Can be either dioecious or self-fruiting, depending on the cultivar. All wild creatures love persimmons, especially deer and many birds. The edible, deep red-orange fruits have an amaretto-caramel flavor that is said to rival the Asian varieties. If your interest is piqued, check out this excellent guide to growing persimmons: https://gardenerspath.com/plants/fruit-trees/grow-american-persimmon/ .
- Dogwood, Cornus florida – The red berries of our native dogwood are winter bird favorites. And who can resist the cloud-like blooms in spring! A lovely choice. (It’s worth mentioning that the Kousa dogwood, a Korean cousin, produces a strawberry-sized fruit that self-seeds prolifically. Unfortunately, most birds and mammals ignore it. Stick with our native dogwood if you want to feed the wildlife.)
- Crabapples, Malus – Choose a cultivar with small, berry-sized fruit that persists on the tree all winter; there are quite a few. The prolific fruits become palatable to birds after a few freeze and thaw cycles, which soften and tame the tannins. EXCEPTIONS: Cultivars Donald Wyman, Adams, Firebird, and Red Jewel. For some reason, the birds won’t touch these.
- Rowan or Mountain Ash, Sorbus americana – A large attractive tree with showy edible gold, red, or orange berry clusters. Historically used by Native Americans for medicinal purposes. Birds adore them and these trees make nice yard specimens too.
- Common Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna – An introduced non-native that grows to about 30 feet tall, with edible red fruits, or haws, persisting through winter. Has thorns as the name implies. A favorite of thrushes and waxwings. Good for borders and hedgerows.
- Nellie Stevens Holly (Ilex Nellie R. Stevens) – This Chinese cultivar has glossy deep emerald foliage that’s dense and vigorous, perfect for a specimen or hedge. Unlike American holly, the leaves are only mildly prickly, making it easy to work with but vulnerable to deer browse. Nellie Stevens is promoted as self-fertile, but solo berry output is often meager or zilch. You really need a male pollinator for good berry production! (The Monrovia website recommends Ilex cornuta.) We protect our Nellie Stevens every winter with deer netting mounted on rebar stakes, left open at the top so the birds don’t become trapped.
Not Recommended
- Common Juniper; Eastern Red Cedar These related trees are native, dioecious, and produce waxy blue berries that birds love. However, they are not without problems: their pollen causes hay fever; they’re hosts for cedar-apple rust disease; they spread aggressively. I would not worry about the various juniper hybrids, though, many of which produce a few berries and are generally well-behaved.
- American Holly (Ilex opaca) Dioecious. I don’t recommend American holly because they’re high maintenance. Our hot humid summers make them prone to diseases and pests like leaf miner. They are sensitive to insufficiently acid soil, root rot and adverse weather conditions, causing the leaves to develop chlorosis, a sickly yellowish color. If you have mature healthy American hollies, consider yourself fortunate! American holly cultivars produce red or gold berries depending on cultivar.
- Canada Goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and other goldenrods. These familiar plants can be real thugs and are of little interest out of bloom. Unless you have a wild meadow where they’ve taken up residence on their own, there are better choices.
WARNING: HEAVENLY BAMBOO CAN BE FATAL TO BIRDS
Heavenly Bamboo, Nandina domestica – In my humble opinion, growing Nandina is never a good idea, although many people do grow it and nurseries certainly sell it. This Asian introduction is popular because it’s attractive and virtually carefree. Besides having pretty burgundy-toned foliage, a fertilized female plant will produce grape-like racemes of gorgeous red, burgundy or orange berries in fall.
Who wouldn’t be seduced by such beauty? Ah, how deceiving!
Sure it’s poisonous, you say, but so are plenty of other plants we grow, right? What’s the harm? Why is this one different?
Unfortunately, all parts of this plant are extremely toxic. According to all the sources I consulted, Nandina contains compounds which convert to hydrogen cyanide when ingested.
Hydrogen cyanide is highly toxic to all wildlife and domestic animals, including pets. It is particularly toxic to birds, especially cedar waxwings, who ingest large quantities of the berries and perish. Robins, bluebirds, mockingbirds and other berry eaters could also become sick or die.
The National Institutes of Health says consumption of Nandina berries by humans is usually not fatal, but it can cause severe vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain in young children, even after eating just one berry. Texas alone reported over 875 cases of child poisoning by Nandina between 2000-2015.
As if this weren’t enough, Nandina is highly invasive and has already escaped cultivation in parts of the US, particularly the South. I shudder to think of its impact on our already dwindling songbird populations.
If you must have a Nandina, please purchase a male plant that cannot bear fruit and enjoy the pretty foliage. If you already have a berry-bearing female, consider cutting off and discarding the berries in the trash before the birds start eating them, typically mid to late winter. And do alert your friends. Most people have no idea how poisonous this plant is.
A Top Conifer for Winter Cover
Canada or Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)
All conifers are great for creating instant bird habitat. But perhaps the single best conifer for both food and natural cover is our native Canada Hemlock. Its feathery dense foliage is excellent winter protection for many wild creatures. In addition, the cones are a favorite food for chickadees, juncos, warblers (in summer), crossbills, goldfinches, grouse, grosbeaks and siskins. I can personally attest that hemlocks are virtual bird magnets. They also happen to be one of the most graceful of all evergreens. In the wild, this tree can reach 100 feet tall and live to be over 500 years old. But in the typical suburban landscape, it rarely exceeds 40 feet. Still, place it with care and its ultimate height in mind. Weeping cultivars take up much less space.
It’s a misconception that Canada hemlocks are poisonous; they are not. (That would be Cicuta or water hemlock, an herbaceous plant in the parsley family.) In fact, Canada hemlock’s new growth tips are quite edible, used in Scandinavian cooking and even commercially in liqueurs. The soft, light green tips in spring have a mild citrusy flavor.
Unless you get a weeping cultivar, hemlocks are moderate growers and can be sheared when young to promote a full, bushy look. They tolerate partial shade quite well, but for the healthiest trees that will resist pests and climate ravages, the more sun the better.
You may have heard hemlocks are susceptible to the woolly adelgid, a cottony white scale insect that’s decimating entire hemlock forests. That is true, but adelgid infestations are most common in shady woodlands. Horticultural oil is an excellent treatment and will control or eliminate adelgids with just one or two applications, should your yard trees become infected. Healthy hemlocks in full sun generally shrug off this pest on their own, so don’t let the threat of adelgids stop you from enjoying this evergreen. The birds will thank you and you’ll get years of enjoyment from its incomparably lovely form.
Weeping cultivars drape delicately like tiers of lacy green waterfalls, and can even be trained over an arbor or pergola like I did here, at my previous residence.
But you don’t have to use hemlock. As stated earlier, all evergreens make great bird cover, providing refuge against storms and hawks. From a bird’s eye view, any evergreen is better than no evergreen! Pines, spruces, firs, camellias, laurels, hollies and the like can mean the difference between life and death in the middle of a harsh winter. So consider planting any of these. A grouping of several evergreens together makes especially attractive cover as well as an excellent wind break.
This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means. It’s intended to get you started with proven performers to bring in more birds than you might otherwise get. If I missed a good choice, let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear what others are planting for their feathered friends. Meanwhile, enjoy the birds you do have this winter!
