Bird-Friendly Gardening: 6 Tips from Sarah and Dan’s Backyard

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By Kate Dalgleish, Director of Annual Giving

For Sarah and Dan, supporting birds goes beyond their monthly donation to Birds Canada; it’s something they cultivate daily in their own backyard. Earlier this summer, I was fortunate to visit their home, nestled in Northern Ontario, where their gardens were just beginning to come alive with the activity of pollinators and birds alike, offering a patch of hope and habitat in a world where both are increasingly threatened.

As we head into fall, it is a good time to think about how your outdoor space can support birds, whether you’re preparing beds for fall planting, planning a native garden for spring, or simply observing what’s already thriving.

As Sarah puts it, “You’re not a bird nerd if you’re not gardening for ’em.” Below, they share six practical tips to inspire others to create bird and insect friendly spaces, no matter how small.

Every great garden begins with learning. “Your garden really depends on the space you have available,” says Sarah, who recommends birdgardens.ca and her personal favourite book, A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee by Lorraine Johnson & Sheila Colla, especially useful for Ontario gardeners.

These resources help you choose native and companion plants, understand the needs of local wildlife, and design a space that works for both people and nature.

Instead of reshaping the land, Sarah and Dan listen to it. Their property includes both a shady woodland area and a sunny, sheltered slope, each offering its own unique potential.

In the woods, they encourage shade-tolerant plants like Smooth Solomon’s Seal and Large-Leaved Aster to flourish. On the slope, they’re gradually establishing a native meadow with goldenrod and coneflower to attract American Goldfinches, and berry-producing shrubs like elderberry and Highbush Cranberry to feed waxwings and thrushes.

“Don’t fight the land,” they say. “Support what wants to grow there.” That philosophy means welcoming “volunteer” plants (those that pop up naturally) and carefully removing invasives like tansy and dockweed. In their place, Annual Fleabane and Wild Strawberries are thriving. 

Wild Strawberry. Photo: Kevin Kavanagh

Before digging in, Sarah and Dan outline their future garden beds using a simple but effective method: solarizing. They lay down plain cardboard (with minimal ink or glue, and no coating) over the areas they want to develop, and also define the beds with logs or rocks.

“It sets a clear border,” says Dan, “and then we know which areas to avoid disturbing in the spring.” After covering the space for at least a year, they top it with soil and mulch. The result? Fewer weeds, better water retention, and a clear garden path.

If they’re using clear plastic to solarize, it stays in place anywhere from two months to over a year. But with cardboard, they top it with soil (and plant into it) as soon as the same day. For beds they plan to use the following year, they add the soil, then mulch heavily so any weeds that germinate in the meantime are easy to pull. Leaving bare cardboard exposed for too long, they note, will just invite weeds or grass to grow through where the cardboard has broken down.

If insects love your garden, birds will too. Sarah keeps a close eye on which plants are getting nibbled. “Insects eating all of a specific type of plant is not a sign there’s too many insects. It’s a sign there’s not enough of that type of food. Canada violet is getting decimated. That’s a sign I need to plant more of it. Wild ginger, on the other hand, has only been nibbled at, so that tells us there’s currently enough.” This approach helps ensure their garden supports the food web from the ground up.

And it’s paying off. As the insect population has grown, so too has the number of insect-eating birds. Flycatchers rarely even passed through here just two years ago. This year, nesting pairs of Eastern Phoebes, Great Crested Flycatchers, and Least Flycatchers moved in and have remained all summer. While we spoke, a Hairy Woodpecker flew overhead with a beakful of insects, en route to a nest full of hungry chicks.

Bee balm is irresistible to Ruby-throated Hummingbirds as well as bumblebees; one of each share a flower off to the right of this hastily-snapped photo. The cage behind them is protecting a newly-established bed of Canada anemone that will provide a much-needed early spring food source.

One of the simplest and most powerful things you can do for birds and insects is to simply put down the rake. Fallen leaves aren’t garden debris, they’re habitat. As they decompose, they nourish the soil, support insect life, and offer an essential foraging ground for birds.

“Even just raking the leaves to the side of the yard instead of disposing of them helps,” says Sarah. “You can still keep a bit of lawn if you want, but make sure some of those leaves are left in place.”

Leaf litter is a mini-ecosystem. Beneath it, you’ll find overwintering insects, pupating moths, and the building blocks of the food web, all of which help feed birds in the spring. Whether you choose to mulch leaves into your lawn, rake them into garden beds, or simply let them be, your local birds will thank you.

Similarly, leaving standing dead stalks, like the hollow stems of plants like milkweed, over the winter is vital for cavity-nesting insects.

It’s a good reminder that gardening doesn’t stop when the snow falls. What we leave in our winter gardens has a ripple effect. By keeping leaves and stems in place, we’re giving birds and pollinators a head start for spring. Take them away, and we take away the insects that so many birds depend on. And as if that isn’t reason enough, leaving winter habitat in place also knocks a few chores off the fall to-do list!

As A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee puts it: “When we bag up leaves and stalks in the fall, or remove them in the spring, we are basically throwing out all the pollinators using these materials as habitat. Who wants to throw out butterflies?!”

Gardening for birds and biodiversity can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. “It can be as simple as choosing one plant and putting it in a pot or the ground, then doing that again next week, next month, next year…whenever it works for you. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” says Sarah. “The birds don’t care if any of the plants are in the perfect spot in perfect conditions, but they certainly care that there is a reliable food source now where there wasn’t before.”

She and Dan believe that small actions, taken consistently and with care, add up to something meaningful, not just for their garden, but for birds across the country. Because insects generally have a very small range that they can travel, it is impossible for them to thrive when their habitat is turned into the huge swaths of lawn that are so common. That’s why even small plantings have a big impact. If every yard had even one or two native plants, all those tiny habitats would add up to a huge benefit to struggling insect and bird populations.

Sarah and Dan