Where to go for wildlife planting information for my area?
I am trying to plan my gardens now and would like to incorporate as many flowers and shrubs as I can into my gardens that will draw birds and insects. I don't want to plant anything that is invasive in this area and am not sure exactly what the local birds eat. Who can I contact or how would I look this up on-line?
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Congratulations! I think it is terrific that you are starting out with it in mind to not plant invasive exotics and to think about the habitat value of what you plant.
One nice on-line resource is NPIN Native Plant Database
https://www.wildflower.org/plants/
It is a project of the LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Center at UTexas. But it has state by state information for all the states. It will give you a recommended species list of commercially available native plants for your state or you can search the database, by telling what you are looking for (plant, shrub, tree, etc) the conditions (sun exposure, moisture) and it will give you a list of what native species meet those requirements. If you click on each one it gives info about its habitat value, what birds and other creatures use it.
It isn't everything you want, it doesn't give lists of plant these things to attract these birds, but it is a good tool. And as long as you are planting natives, you are almost guaranteed that they will have habitat value, because they are the plants the local fauna evolved with.
There's tons of good info out there. Use the winter to do some research. From my bookshelf (these are older, because I've had them for a long time): The Backyard Bird Watcher, by G H Harrison, Birdscaping Your Garden by G. Adams, Taylor's Guide to Natural Gardening, Natural Landscaping by Sally Roth, Natural Gardening by Knopf, Wasowski et al. All the natural gardening books have chapters about gardening for birds, insects, wildlife. Your library would certainly have books in this genre, if not these particular ones (and maybe Santa would bring you one!
)
The National Wildlife Federation (nwf.org) has a backyard wildlife program (my yard is NWF certified wildlife habitat) and they have info about what that means and how to do it:
https://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife.aspx
The Wild Ones ( https://www.wildones.org/ ) is a native plants/ natural landscaping organization. they have lots of good on-line info and they have a lot of local chapters, but the chapter organization looks to be mostly a midwestern thing.
Hope this gives you some ideas for getting started.
One nice on-line resource is NPIN Native Plant Database
https://www.wildflower.org/plants/
It is a project of the LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Center at UTexas. But it has state by state information for all the states. It will give you a recommended species list of commercially available native plants for your state or you can search the database, by telling what you are looking for (plant, shrub, tree, etc) the conditions (sun exposure, moisture) and it will give you a list of what native species meet those requirements. If you click on each one it gives info about its habitat value, what birds and other creatures use it.
It isn't everything you want, it doesn't give lists of plant these things to attract these birds, but it is a good tool. And as long as you are planting natives, you are almost guaranteed that they will have habitat value, because they are the plants the local fauna evolved with.
There's tons of good info out there. Use the winter to do some research. From my bookshelf (these are older, because I've had them for a long time): The Backyard Bird Watcher, by G H Harrison, Birdscaping Your Garden by G. Adams, Taylor's Guide to Natural Gardening, Natural Landscaping by Sally Roth, Natural Gardening by Knopf, Wasowski et al. All the natural gardening books have chapters about gardening for birds, insects, wildlife. Your library would certainly have books in this genre, if not these particular ones (and maybe Santa would bring you one!
)The National Wildlife Federation (nwf.org) has a backyard wildlife program (my yard is NWF certified wildlife habitat) and they have info about what that means and how to do it:
https://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife.aspx
The Wild Ones ( https://www.wildones.org/ ) is a native plants/ natural landscaping organization. they have lots of good on-line info and they have a lot of local chapters, but the chapter organization looks to be mostly a midwestern thing.
Hope this gives you some ideas for getting started.
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