Bird Gardening: powerhouse fruiting plants, with Andy Brand

IT’S A CLOSE CALL for me and my friend Andy Brand: Do we like plants best, or birds (or butterflies or bumblebees or…)? But I think I know the answer to the question, finally: What we like best are bird-friendly plants, because having a garden heavy on those means it will be heavy on avian and Lepidopteran visitors and everybody else, too.

Andy Brand is longtime nursery manager of the famed mail-order and destination nursery Broken Arrow in Hamden, Connecticut, and each September he and I teach half-day workshops in my rural Hudson Valley, New York, garden–with one part of the workshop being about gardening for the birds. Our next one is Saturday 16, 2017 (details at the bottom of this story, or at this other page).

But no matter where you are listening, we talked recently about strategies and plants that bring in the birds and more—particularly the top genera of powerhouse woody plants that fuel fruit production in summer and fall for hungry birds, preceded by spring or summer flowers that support pollinators and other beneficials. I’ve also included resource links at the end, to find plant lists for your area to support the birds.

Source: bird gardening: powerhouse fruiting plants, with andy brand – A Way To Garden