This month brings Birding Big Day on Saturday 23rd November, designed to celebrate and raise awareness of the national treasure that is our wild bird life. You’ll soon notice the variety in those grey flocks of pigeons, and that all those LBJs (little brown jobs) are actually a dozen or more different species each with its own ‘personality’ and favourite places to hang out.
There are many ways to add an extra feathered dimension to the enjoyment of your bit of the outdoors. Even a small patio area or balcony can be designed to entice wildlife by using a variety of container planted up to create different levels of vegetation.
Ballerina-flowered fuschias look pretty pirouetting from window boxes or baskets suspended from a tree or pergola. Begonias, petunias and verbenas also add height and help create a gentle bird-friendly thicket effect when allowed to trail from tall containers and hanging baskets. Grow low-growing varieties of fuschia, begonia, verbena, as well as pastel-shades of phlox, with a thick layer of kraal manure or other organic mulch to create a forest floor that robins and thrushes will love to scratch about in.
Hardy cordylines in large containers make an air-purifying feature of well-lit interior spaces and, outdoors, add interest and depth to any plant grouping. They also produce attractive berries that fruit-eating birds will relish. Add other middle-height fruiting plants such as chilli and other capiscum, and bush fuschias. Buddlejas, shrubby asters, shasta and other daisies will attract bees, butterflies and insect-eating birds.
Birds get as much pleasure from our garden water features as we do – perhaps even more. Watch a pair of sparrows as they first eye, and then step carefully into a shallow puddle, hop out, look around, and hop back in to quickly fluff a shower of droplets over their heads, and you decide. Use dainty New Zealand rock lilies, multi-coloured Inca and day lilies, and white and blue agapanthus to create lush birdy habitat around a fountain or birdbath. If you’ve space for a larger pond, plant it up with indigenous water lilies or yummy edible waterblommetjies.
For more information on bringing life to your garden, visit the Life is a Garden website or join the conversation on their Facebook page.
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