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Annual Plants for Bringing Birds to the Garden

There are perennials, annuals, shrubs and trees which will create a friendly and inviting landscape environment for birds to come and visit your garden. Today’s article will focus on annual plants that attract birds to your yard or garden.

Cosmos (Cosmos) for Songbirds in the Garden

Cosmos flowers are bright, cheerful and easy to grow, making them a perfect addition to the wildlife or native garden landscape. The kid-friendly flowers are also loved by birds for their edible flower seeds. Gardeners will need to stop deadheading the flowers at the end of the summer to make sure there is a good crop of seeds for the wild birds in their area who are preparing for winter.

Cosmos flowers are grown easily from seeds which can be sown either in the fall or in early spring. One advantage to allowing cosmos flowers to go to seed each year is the host of volunteer seedling gardeners will enjoy each year. Cosmos plants are drought tolerant and heat-resistant, so they also do well in container plantings.

Moss Rose (Portulaca grandiflora) – A Bird-Friendly Ground Cover

Another easy to grow plant, the moss rose thrives in poor soil and low water conditions that would kill many other flowering plants. Birds are attracted to the bright colored flowers and prolific seeds. Moss rose plants will likely reseed themselves, however they do not usually come true if you start with cultivars, so many gardeners will replant them each year. Additionally, a hanging basket of moss roses has been reported to house a bird nest by more than one porch gardener!

Moss roses prefer full sun and well-drained soil conditions. The blooms last from late spring all the way through the first killing frost of winter, making them a long-lived accent plant in the garden landscape. Sometimes a mid-season trimming will create a new flush of flowers as well as prevent leggy growth. Portulaca plants can be used in hanging baskets, as ground covers for other drought-tolerant plants, or along the edges of a raised flower bed to break up the border.

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) for Home Grown Bird Seed

With an unmistakable look in the garden landscape, the sunflower is a favorite of songbirds because of the large seedheads that are produced each fall. Most sunflowers can grow several feet tall, while others are available in shorter forms. Here are some favorite sunflowers for a variety of garden uses, but if gardeners want to attract wildlife to the garden they will want to leave the seeds on the plants when they form in the fall.

Unlike the other two plants mentioned, sunflowers are not as drought tolerant and need even watering throughout the growing season. While sunflowers make excellent cut flowers for indoor flower arrangements, or the seeds can be harvested for human use, gardeners who want to attract birds should leave the seedheads to riped on the plant.