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Flower gardening can be simple but it can also be quite an art. I’m no artist but I do enjoy a great looking garden layout.

With each seasonal garden, you will come up with more ideas on how to enhance your backyard ecosystem. Many people enjoy reading about gardening tips on how to attract wildlife to their gardens. As a child, you may recall chasing yellow, orange and white butterflies, but perhaps you seldom see them anymore. Most of us remember our first glimpse of a tiny, delicate hummingbird or the first time a dragonfly touched our skin while we were floating on a raft at the lake. Certain plants are dynamos for luring these wonderful creatures to our back doorsteps. While you are free to incorporate whatever flowers you’d like into your garden, adding a few carefully chosen wildlife favorites will give you much more to gaze upon.

If you’re interested in creating a garden that will appeal to song birds, then you can incorporate a few special shrubs, perennials, annuals, cultivated and native foliage to draw them to your yard. By growing plants from each group, you can offer fruits and seeds for every time of the year to keep your feathered friends singing year round. Make sure to include a bird bath and toss seeds around in the wintertime to keep your bird family satisfied.

Furthermore, think about the fact that, in addition to your blooms, birds like trees for safety, nesting and refuge from the elements. Frequently the trees even supply food such as sap, seeds and berries. You can consider deciduous trees such as black walnut, red mulberry, dogwood, sassafras, American mountain ash, chestnut, and hazelnut, as well as coniferous trees including blue spruce, American holly, red cedar California juniper, ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and white cedar.

Flower gardening is an important source of food for sparrows, finches and other songbirds. You can try perennials like penstemon, tickseed, bee balm, goldenrod, cosmos, purple coneflower and four o’ clocks, or you may try annuals like sunflowers, asters, bachelor’s button, spider flower, snapdragons and cockscomb. Garden guides also recommend planting shrubs and vines where birds can hide from predators and seek out food. Some tasty plants (like cherries and raspberries) are preferable to our flying friends, but they’re picked clean in a hurry. On the other hand, birds can be seen feasting all year long on elderberries, blackberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, bayberries, Oregon grapes, beauty-berries, silver-berries, blueberries, crab apples, cranberries and currants all year long.

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.

Your house may be beautiful, but if the surrounding area isn’t well maintained, it ruins the whole effect. Home gardening can make a tremendous difference in the appearance of your property. Visit the Landscaping Ideas site for some fabulous ideas to add class and style to your property.

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