Choosing native plants
When choosing native plants for your garden, you need to match them to the conditions in your garden. If you are planting for birds, you should particularly consider their needs.
Choose for conditions
Consider plants that will:
- grow well in your garden. Consider the plant's needs and what your garden can provide e.g. type of soil, position of your site, what aspect it has. Is the plant actually suitable for your garden?
- grow locally. Often indigenous plants (plants that occur naturally in your area) will be more successful as they are adapted to similar conditions, and they are especially important if your garden forms part of a wildlife corridor to local bushland, as they will not become environmental weeds.
- fit into your garden space and into your garden design: find out their size at maturity, both height and width.
Choose for birds
Ask yourself what each plant might provide for birds: food, shelter, nesting material or a nesting site? Things to think about include:
- how densely does it grow?
- is it prickly and/or can provide shelter for small birds?
- does it attract insects or provide some kind of food such as berries or nectar from flowers?
- What size does it become when mature?
- How many of each kind should you plant to form a dense thicket for small birds?
Choose for variety and complexity
No single plant will fit all the requirements of birds, which is why you need to:
- Choose a variety of plants, but don't buy only one of each. Birds need variety but they also need enough of each type to make it worth their while visiting or, even better, moving in permanently. So it is better to plant many plants of a few species (five or more plants) than a few plants of lots of different species.
- Choose a mix of plants that provide a complex vertical structure from the ground up; trees, large, medium and small shrubs and groundcovers such as grasses or ferns.