Things You Didn't Know...

Gardens can be a relaxing place for us to spend time, but, with careful planting, they also can be home to a variety of birds, butterflies, and small animals. It’s not difficult to create a wildlife-friendly habitat and your garden may already have some of the necessary elements.

SELECT WILDLIFE FOOD PLANTS: Provide nuts, berries, buds, catkins, fruits, nectar, and seeds that mature in different seasons. Plants that attract insects attract birds! Each species of butterfly and moth requires a specific plant on which to raise its caterpillar.

PROVIDE WATER: Provide water year-round for birds; wet soil in summer for butterflies.

PROVIDE SHELTER: Evergreens and dense shrubs are best. Supplement live shelter with brush and rock piles for the winter.

REDUCE LAWN AREAS: Lawns provide virtually NO wildlife benefit except to deer and Canada Geese. Reduce lawn areas to the minimum required for human needs.

INCREASE DIVERSITY: A diverse habitat is a healthy habitat. Plant a variety of food plants to provide a variety of food throughout the year.

PLANT NATIVES: It is a fact; native birds and butterflies prefer native plants! A number of non-native flowering plants compliment a native garden, but absolutely avoid invasives, like Purple Loosestrife!

LOVE BUGS: No insecticides; minimize the use of all chemicals. Birds and bats require insects to survive. In turn, they are our best insect controls. Very few insects are pests; learn to embrace beneficial insects and to tolerate a few of the pests. “Bug zappers” kill far more beneficial insects than nuisance ones.

GO WILD: Let part of your yard grow as it wishes, removing only those plants considered to be “invasive.” Many “weeds” provide seeds for birds. This is especially true of annuals.

REDUCE FALL CLEANUP: Birds eat dried seeds in winter; Many butterflies and moths spend the winter as eggs, caterpillars, or pupa in leaf litter or on “dead” plant materials -- a lovely excuse not to be too tidy. Raking leaves and removing flower stalks removes next year’s butterflies and moths.

RELAX AND ENJOY! The less mowing, weeding, pruning, and fussing with your yard you do, the more wildlife will love it. Use the time you save to watch your wild friends. Invite your neighbors over, maybe they will follow your lead and develop more backyard habitat.

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Each year the garden creeps into the yard a bit more and the mowed portion diminishes, much to the delight of hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, and me. Soon there will be nothing left to mow but pathways through wildflower gardens.

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Hummingbird Feeders
To intercept spring migrants and hold onto them as potential nesting birds, hang hummingbird feeders in mid-April. Males arrive first. From that day forward hummingbirds are regulars at my feeders and in budding tree tops as they flit after spiders and other insects. The constant source of food that a feeder can provide (April through October) in a garden that is always changing, and where nectar is not constant, may be what entices a hummingbird to nest in your yard or nearby.

The proper solution for a feeder is one part sugar and four parts water (or one cup of sugar added to four cups of water). A stronger sugar concentration could be hard for the birds to digest or lead to liver damage. A quart can be made at a time and extra stored in the refrigerator. Red dye is unnecessary, even discouraged; most hummingbird feeders have red parts that serve quite well to attract the birds. A honey solution may lead to a fatal fungus disease in hummingbirds.

A mandatory responsibility that comes with the enjoyment feeders bring is maintaining their cleanliness and supplying fresh solution. They must be cleaned thoroughly with hot, soapy water and then rinsed with boiling hot water at least once a week, and more frequently (every two to three days) during the extreme heat of summer. Then refill with fresh solution, even if birds are not diminishing the supply. Otherwise, old solution ferments and could even be harmful once it turns into alcohol. Early in the spring when feeder activity is low, I only put an inch or so of solution in each feeder. Actually the only time to fill feeders to the top is during heavy use, from late June to early September.

Feeders should complement yards full of nectar sources and healthy insect populations. This mix of food (evolving gardens and always-available feeders) is what may entice a hummingbird to nest in or near your yard. When their favored nectar sources are blooming, hummingbirds will ignore feeders. Continue to maintain feeders even when they're not in use. The hummingbirds will be back.
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A Successful Hummingbird Garden
Many flowering plants attract hummingbirds. Most are tubular in shape and many are red, though certainly not all. A successful hummingbird garden provides nectar sources from May through the first frost. There is a great temptation to plant acres of Bee Balm or Cardinal Flower, two of their favorite nectar sources. But in each case nectar would be available for just a brief period in a hummingbird's life. The wise gardener selects an assortment of flowering plants with overlapping blooming periods, mixes perennials and annuals, and lets some of nature's wildflowers and weeds persist, many of which are favored by hummingbirds and butterflies.
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Add Butterflies and Moths to the Mix
What is a hummingbird garden without the added dazzle of butterflies and moths? Quite simply, plants chosen to attract hummingbirds will often attract butterflies and moths too. The core of my butterfly and hummingbird garden is a large corridor of Tropical Sage (4 feet by 12 feet, with plants every 10 inches), a dozen Butterfly Bushes, and sizeable patches of Bee Balm, Butterfly Weed, Common and Swamp Milkweed, Joe-pye-weed, Mistflower, Phlox, Purple Coneflower, New England Aster, Seaside Goldenrod, Zinnias, Sedum, Brazilian Vervain, Mexican Sunflower, and a pond edged with Pickerelweed. All this is interspersed with many other flowers, herbs, and volunteer weeds like Queen Anne's Lace, Lamb's Quarters, Curled Dock, and flowering trees, shrubs, and vines.
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Plant IT and They Will Come
Plant a butterfly and hummingbird garden and they will come. Lure butterflies right into your own yard so that you can savor them. You'll first notice the big, showy swallowtails, but actually most butterflies are tiny and easily overlooked. Be sure to take binoculars when you go out to enjoy your garden. Butterflies are easily flushed by movement, so be sure to look ahead at your flowers for visitors. A butterfly's camouflage is amazing and the naked eye can't be counted on to detect many of them. Binoculars are essential. A camera is fun too, but be sure to move in slowly and low so as not to cross over them with your shadow and you might get an eye-popping photo or naked eye look.

Most moths are active at night. Treat yourself on a moonlit night to a stroll through your gardens to see another world unfold, as many of the flowers so attractive to butterflies by day are adorned with moths at night. By day you may see Hummingbird Moths in your gardens; the two species to expect are Hummingbird Clearwing and Snowberry Clearwing. Hummingbird Clearwings are bigger, have red markings in their clear wings, and greenish bodies; Snowberry Clearwings are a bit smaller and resemble bumble bees with their yellow and black bodies, camouflage key to their survival. They hover like a hummingbird before the flowers and are a fun addition to any garden.
Click here for the plant list
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Unusual Preferences
Quite a few butterflies (and moths) prefer feces, urine, and rotten fruit to flowers. Not owning any fruit trees, I buy pears, peaches, bananas, and watermelon to attract butterflies. Cultivated a relationship with your favorite farm stand. They may save their spoiled fruit for you. Watermelon is the easiest attractant. Place a flat slice on a plate, dolling out new slices as the first dries out or gets moldy. Bananas have worked the best for me and they're always available, but they aren't always rotten enough to attract butterflies. I've learned to peel and freeze them; once thawed they are nice and liquidy and immediately attractive to butterflies. A great homemade butterfly feeder is nothing more than a ceramic plate with a lip (so liquids don't drip off) filled with gooey bananas and hung from a tree by a simple plant hanger. I suspend it, rather than place it on the ground, so ants do not make off with the precious bananas. A little fresh orange juice each day keeps the bananas moist and attractive a while longer to the normally elusive butterflies.

Providing water adds another enticement into your yard. Garden sprinklers draw in hummingbirds and mud puddles please butterflies. Misters and drips are a more permanent solution than a garden sprinkler. They are easy to set up and readily available now that gardening for wildlife has caught on. My mister is set up to spray down through tree branches and into a series of birdbaths. I've utilized the moist ground and planted Cardinal Flower, Joe-pye-weed, and other plants that like wet feet under the mister. Hummingbirds find it irresistible; they fly through the mist and often bathe in the drips collected on leaves.
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Great Reasons for an Untidy Garden
About fifteen or so of the commonly seen butterflies cannot survive winters in any form (egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or adult butterfly) and must migrate south in the fall or die. Each spring or fall, in some cases, they migrate north and repopulate from the south. Nearly all the rest of butterflies pass the winter in gardens not as an adult butterfly, but as an egg on a plant, a caterpillar in a curled-up leaf or down in the leaf litter, or a chrysalis attached to a plant stem in a sheltered spot. The adult butterflies died months before, after laying eggs. For this very reason I often leave my garden standing through the winter. Otherwise I would be carting off next year's potential butterflies as I tidied up.

Another excellent excuse to be a lazy gardener in the fall is that the spring through fall butterfly garden turns into a winter bird garden. Many birds find shelter in the still standing garden and feed on the abundant seed heads.