Tips for a Flower Garden That Attracts Wildlife
Organic gardens involve the use of all-natural compost, garden tools and pest deterrents. When you’re flower gardening, you may want to consider creating an ecosystem where wildlife and other animals can thrive. Perhaps you enjoy the wonderment of walking through the garden and seeing ladybugs, praying mantises, dragonflies, hummingbirds and butterflies enjoying your natural creation as much as you do. Here are some gardening tips to create an enduring, wildlife-friendly garden.
If you’re considering designing a garden that will catch the attention of song birds, then you can add a few special shrubs, annuals, perennials, cultivated and native flora to draw them to your property. By growing plants from each category, you can offer fruits and seeds for every time of the year to keep your feathered friends chirping all year long. Make certain to include a bird bath and throw seeds out in the wintertime to keep your bird clan content.
Furthermore, think about the fact that, as well as your blooms, birds like trees for safety, nesting and shelter from the elements. Sometimes the trees also provide food such as sap, seeds and berries. You can consider leaf bearing trees such as black walnut, red mulberry, dogwood, sassafras, American mountain ash, chestnut, and hazelnut, in addition to evergreen trees including blue spruce, American holly, red cedar white cedar, Douglas fir, California juniper and ponderosa pine.
You may want to also consider flower gardening to attract red ladybugs and dragonflies too. These carnivores will eat the unsightly aphids, beetles, flies, mosquitoes and other pesky creatures that are doing damage to your garden. Favorite ladybug dinners include cilantro, dill, fennel, chamomile, cosmos, geraniums, penstemon, yarrow and coreopsis. Water gardens that are generally shallow but two feet deep in the center are the best way to lure dragonflies, who enjoy a cool swim and places to hide beneath garden plants. They also like pond lilies, buttonbush, seedbox and horsetail rush, as these provide the sort of cover dragonflies like.
Naturally, flower gardening to attract both hummingbirds and butterflies is ideal. Gardening tips suggest incorporating bee balm, California fuschia, salvia, columbines, daisies, sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, peas, clover, mint, milkweed, parsley, violets and pansiesthe to increase your odds of keeping these creatures nearby. Nature stores also sell very effective red and yellow hummingbird feeders that these little winged beauties just love. Since hummingbirds can be pretty territorial, you might want to set up more than one in different locations around the yard if you notice the birds are coming to your home.
Everyone wants their property to look its best and one of the ways to do that is to enhance your landscaping. For some great suggestions on flower gardening and other ways to get the backyard of your dreams, check out the Landscaping Ideas site.
