A garden is potentially a paradise for birds. The right habitat will offer them a variety of food, shelter from the elements and from predators, and places to nest. By growing bird-friendly plants, a border can quickly become a larder of insects, berries, hips, and seeds. And by planting lots of evergreen cover – in the form of climbers, shrubs, or trees – the garden is transformed into a safe, leafy haven.
In return, we get the enjoyment of watching the birds. In spring, they are flying back and forth with nest-building material, and then with food for chicks, and, come early summer, fledglings are learning to forage and fly. For much of the year, birds fill the air with song; two of the most enchanting singers in the bird world – the blackbird and the robin – are very common garden birds, and the robin is unique in continuing to warble through winter.
Birds are also highly useful to gardeners: blue tits pick aphids off roses, thrushes smash snails, sparrows polish off caterpillars, great tits sweep the eaves of spiders, and robins keep us company whilst we do the weeding. Give birds the plants they love, and they will lend us a helping hand and bring the garden to life.
Which trees are best for birds
If you have room for a tree, it will bring in a lot of birds, being both a rich habitat for insects that they can eat and a place of shelter.
Mountain ashes (Sorbus) are excellent, providing colourful clusters of berries that feed blackbirds, thrushes, and waxwings, as well as autumn leaf colour and bee-friendly flowers in late spring. Pink-berried 'Leonard Messel' and golden-berried 'Copper Kettle' are good for small gardens.
Crab apples are another superb choice, with some cultivars – such as Malus x zumi 'Professor Sprenger' – offering a cloud of spring blossom, as well as autumn leaf colour and attractive fruit that feeds birds.
Of course, one of the most iconic garden bird trees is holly, which provides a safe nesting site and brightens winter with scarlet berries that are gobbled by thrushes, redwings, and blackbirds. Ilex aquifolium 'Argentea Marginata' is an elegant silver and green female form that can be grown as a standalone tree in a medium to large garden or as topiary or hedging in a smaller garden. There must be a suitable male holly (such as 'Ferox Argentea') in the vicinity to ensure a good show of berries.
But if the birds could pick one tree, it would probably be hawthorn, the berries of which many species (including greenfinches and chaffinches) find moreish. There are several good garden thorns: Crataegus schraderiana has port-coloured fruit and blue-green leaves; C. pinnatifida var. major 'Big Golden Star' blushes red in autumn; and C. ellwangeriana 'Fire Ball' produces large red berries. All three have flowers that feed pollinating insects. Grow them as standalone trees or, even better, as hedging (or mixed hedging) to provide a wealth of shelter and nesting; the common thorn (C. monogyna) is a great hedging choice, having sharp thorns that keep raptors and cats out and snowy blossom that scents the month of May.
Which plants to grow for seeds
Leave spent flowerheads on perennials because – as well as many of them offering gorgeous architectural structure through autumn and winter – the seedheads provide a place for insects to hibernate, as well as seeds. Small birds (especially finches and tits) will use their beaks to pluck out both.
There are many to choose from, including Phlomis, fennel, and cardoon, but some of the birds' favourites include monarda, echinacea, and coneflowers (such as Rudbeckia triloba). The ultimate bird biennial is the teasel, which lures goldfinches, and the must-have annuals are sunflowers (such as terracotta 'Earthwalker'), which provide dinner plates of nutritious seeds for great tits.
Which berry plants to grow for birds
Our native guelder rose and woodbine produce glossy red berries that catch the autumn light and attract warblers and bullfinches. The compact guelder rose Viburnum opulus 'Compactum' is a 1.5-metre shrub with lacecap flowers in early summer and wine-red leaves in autumn, and the honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum 'Graham Thomas' has deliciously scented summer flowers.
If you want to grow berry-laden cotoneaster for birds, the red-fruited forms – such as C. lacteus – are best. The mass of vermillion berries will lure song thrushes and mistle thrushes, but not until late winter, giving you plenty of time to enjoy them.
Mahonias are also high on the bird planting list. While the blue-black berries aren't much to look at, they are a good food source for blackcaps and blackbirds, and some forms (such as M. x media 'Charity') are shade tolerant and architectural and fill the air with scent when they bloom in winter.
Which plants to grow to provide shelter
The thorn queens: holly (mentioned above) and firethorn (such as Pyracantha Saphyr Orange) are superb evergreen boundary plants that protect us from burglars and shield small birds from sparrowhawks; they also produce a fabulous fiery show of autumn berries that blackbirds and robins eat.
Plants that grow in a dense tangle of stems also help to hide birds from predators. The climber Clematis montana fits the bill. The variety 'Mayleen' is one of the best for perfume – its powder-pink flowers exude an incredible vanilla-clove scent in May and June; it looks gorgeous heaped over a wall or shed and wrens like to hop about in its thick jumble of stems. Bearing thorns that offer extra protection, rambling roses are also great tangle plants for birds. 'Rambling Rector' is a vigorous form to send up a mature tree or drape over a summerhouse – masses of red hips follow its beautifully fragrant white flowers. Slightly smaller, 'Francis E. Lester' has scented pink and white blooms, followed by orange hips. Another way to enjoy rosehips is to grow the 2-metre wild shrub rose Rosa glauca, which has carmine-pink flowers amongst purple-grey leaves. Bees feed on all three, and blackbirds sometimes take the hips.
But if you only grow one bird-friendly plant for shelter, make it ivy (Hedera helix). Once established, the shade-tolerant native evergreen becomes a curtain of large, glossy emerald leaves that sparrows, wrens, and robins like to nest behind. On top of that, it produces globes of nutritious inky berries that feed blackbirds and blackcaps when food is scarce in winter.
