I recently moved into a new apartment, and have a fairly nice outdoor space, but sadly, few birds come to visit. :(
I have a bit of money saved up and want to redo the garden box, but am not sure where to begin....
Attached are two photos showing the space currently. Its honestly a bit dull, but at least its private.
So I've narrowed down the requirements as follows:
1. whatever plants I choose, they need to provide the same kind of privacy as the current 'scruffy hedge' I have. minimum plant height needs to be about 1.2m from soil level of the garden box.
2. Ideally, the plants should be Aussie natives
3. Ideally, plants that don't drop a bunch of leaves and/or flowers all over the place. (A little is fine though)
4. I can add some free standing pots where the tiny clip-on boxes are currently, so that bigger plants could be put there.
5. These plants need to be low-maintainance, as I'm quite time-poor :/ I don't have much spare time these days
I have searched two different Bunnings warehouse stores, but they don't seem to stock many natives (if any) and they also seem to have a fairly small range of plants anyway... Which brings me to you guys, hopefully a few of you can help point me in the right direction on where I should go (honestly a little clueless at this point). Anywhere around Sydney.
Thanks in advance
Hi Desmond,
To attract honeyeater birds, which includes a very wide variety of bird shapes, sizes and colours, you could replace the plants, or at least every second plant, with a range of grevillea which can be clipped to shape if you prefer a specific shape, robyn gordon grevillea grows to about 1.2 metres and is certainly a long term flowering grevillea, I cant remember the names of others species of grevillea off the top ofmy head but there are several that would provide a range of colours and range of flowering periods to cover pretty much all of the year.
If you prefer a variety of plants you could replace every second plant with a different plant species including, westringia longifolia, melaleuca claret tops, westringia wynyabbie gem,
Personally I use www.allnatives.com.au to order plants and have them delivered to my door on a fairly regular basis but they only sell tubestock which means it will take a year or three for them to reach the height you desire, if you replace every second plant this might provide a reasonable amount of privacy.
For small less gregarious birds then spiky plants are good at providing them with good habitat. Plants such as ti-tree (leptospermum) , bursaria spinosa are two I can think of at the moment.
For the smaller pots there are a range of smaller flowering plants like scaevola, correa, dwarf native mint bush.
There are also local nurseries run by councils or Greening Australia that can provide more information about availale plants that grow well in pots in your area. I have found most people involved in local natie nurseries are very pleased to offer ideas and advice.
The addition of a bird bath would help to attract birds as well. Though this take a bit of work to empty and clean it daily and refill each morning.
I hope this has been helpful to you. I will keep my thinking cap on and cme back to this thread if I think of more thoughts.
Regards
Wollemi
Happy Birding!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/138588528@N02/
Something you might like to consider, Sparco, is species which are indigenous to where you live. Your local council should have information about these. Indigenous species usually survive well because they've evolved to survive where you are.
Other species of plant that may meet your needs are:
Hardenbergia violacae
Indigofera Australis
Dodonaea triquetra
In the Penrith area you can access plants from the provenance nursery at Muru Mittigar http://murumittigar.com.au/provenance-nursery.php
In Richmond Greening Australia
Richmond Nursery, Rooms 8 & 9, Building S9, Orchard Square, UWS - Hawkesbury - Postal address: PO Box 284 NSW 2753
Phone 02 4570 3900 Fax 02 4570 3950
In Windsor Hawkesbury Community Nursery
http://www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/services/places-and-facilities/community-nursery
I will keep my thinking cap on for you.
Happy Birding!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/138588528@N02/
In the background i think i can see grey gums and sheoaks, at least you have a corridor to start with. For me hybrid grevillias only bring one not so good bosses - honeyeaters. I like one plant - that makes it easy on the eye as well as attracting birds, mass planting is the way to go.lillipillies like wilsonii eg but there are many others. Big puffy red flowers will attract spine-bills,lewins,browns,yellow faced honyeaters and all will have fun chasing each other ! It has thick drooping foliage so that they can hide from likes of bigger honeyeaters etc. The white fruit is also liked by drongos catbirds bowerbirds and figbirds and because the foliage is so thick and uniform it makes good nesting sites for yellow robins, wrens as well as other honeyeaters and you might be lucky to have a ringtail possum nest [drey ] in the under growth. It has worked for me . But this is your choice. Enjoy it and remember a garden is always a work in progess.
small but wide hedge with large water pots with plants
See it! Hear it!
Mid-North Coast NSW
Hi Sparco! For gardening space we have a lot in common. I rent an apartment and the front garden is narrow but very long (almost the entire length of the property), however, the garden beds are only about 3 feet wide. I'm making mine in sections and adding plants when I can on a very limited budget. No-one is helping me either. I'm using what's available on the property for the garden edges and inbetween the plants. I've currently run out of building supplies and just too lazy to complete one garden bed with wooden sleepers.
I don't have a lot of time to take care of all the plants, water wise, anyway. Too much other stuff to do. I've found planting seedlings deeper in the soil and covering the soil with bark chips retains the moisture, improves the soil, and reduces the amount of watering I have to do. Maybe I'll water everything once a month, if I remember.
I have a habit of cramming plants together. I like my privacy, and I'm sure the plants don't care. There's more than ample space for all the plants to develope roots being at ground level anyway. As I can't plant trees on the property (but I snuck in one wattle tree (whoops) everything has to be downsized. There's a lot you can add into a small area actually, including herbs and vegies.
Below are 3 photos of my front garden where my letterbox is. Everything is still pretty small (most are still just baby seedlings or close to one year old (the bigger stuff). The only birds I get in my garden are House sparrows. The resident Eastern Spinebill flies straight passed my Callistemon 'Pink Champagne', (have 2 of them) even when I first put them in and they were flowering. The Eastern Spinebill goes straight for the grevilleas which are elsewhere (to the left and right of this garden bed). So I planted a grevillea (Loopy Lou) which only grows to a metre roughly but it's flowers are not red. I have cacti and succulents in pots which help to create pockets of moisture underneath them. Gardening sucks at times as the plants I'm adding to my garden now are natives but it's only a guess as to whether they are indigenous to my area or not. They grow within 100kms from where I live. I also have annual flowers (Honesty, Hollyhocks I think, and some others) to attract bees. I also have a few exotic shrubs from Japan plus silverbeet as it is a perrenial. My favourite though is a coral creeper I planted just yesterday which I'm going to train to climb all over the fence to create shade so my 2 orchids will not get burnt in summer.
Attracting birds to this garden is really hard. I think, Sparco, you really have to know what sort of birds you want to attract, and just watch them eating from other plants in the area, then experiment. Take a note of the colour variety of flowers in the area and see which birds are attracted to which coloured flowers, and match the plants to suit those colours. I've found Eastern Spinebills don't like pink flowers but will always go for red or yellow flowers in my area. Honeyeaters also seem to like flowers that smell, have an aroma, so anything jasminey or has a strongly wafting odour that smells nice is always a good idea too. Thornbills like jasmine type smelling plants too, and spiney plants they'll retreat to/nest in.
Sparco, I have 2 questions for you....
1. What is below the planter boxes (bare dirt or concrete)?
2. What is on the other side of the planter boxes (that is not shown in your two photos)?
I'm at Tenterfield, NSW. (Formerly known as "Hyperbirds".)
Personally I would start with looking at what birds are around in the broader area, as a garden is not going to attract birds that are not already in the area. Then consider what their needs are - typically food, water, safety and roosting primarily - and nesting sites in spring.
So, for example, are there small honeyeaters/lorikeets around which would benefit from flowering grevilleas/callistemons/eucalypts (though eucs probably won't go in your window box
)?
Are there parrots/fruit eaters around that might benefit from berry/nut producing plants/grasses?
Are there insect eaters around, where a more diverse planting may attract different native insects?
Dense/spiky stuff is good for small birds, as Wollemi suggested, particularly where Noisy Miners dominate.
Bird baths or water supplies are always handing for bringing in birds, providing it is safely out of reach of cats/dogs/etc.
Just a few suggestions
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
Sparco it's fantastic that you want to do your bit for the local birdlife. A small space can be as attractive to birds as a larger space if it's planned well and yes, the current greenlife in your planters doesn't look like it offers too much at the moment, to you or the birds.
The Number 1 thing you can do to attract birds, as Wollemi points out, is to add a shallow bird bath to your space. Research has shown that shallow water (2-5cm) seems to attract the widest variety of species and its preferable that the bath not be glazed so the birds can get a good grip on the sides (although I believe that drowning incidents are rare). I use terracotta pot saucers myself as they are cheap as chips, look great and work a treat. It's easy to keep them topped up and a regular rinse to keep them clean is also an easy job. When placed near a window it's so rewarding and comical when the birds come in to drink and splash around.
In terms of plants, given that you have planter boxes, the first thing to get right is the growing medium. I'm assuming that you will remove the existing plants and will therefore need to replace the existing potting mix. DON'T SKIMP ON THE NEW POTTING MIX. The success of your plants will depend on what you grow them in and the biggest mistake people make is to buy cheap potting mix. Make sure it meets the Premium Potting Mix Australian Standard as indicated by the red ticks on the bag - as opposed to the black ticks or worse still, no ticks. Also, if its natives you want then make sure its an Australian Native Mix - All suppliers, including Bunnings stock a number of Australian Native Premium Potting Mixes.
In terms of plant types, it depends a little on what your taste is but some of the fantastic performers and bird attractors in my garden that grow to that 1.2 - 1.5m in height include:
For nectar feeders - Correa glabra, Correa reflexa, Correa 'Pink Mist', Correa 'Tucker Time Dinner Bells', Correa 'Jezabell' (a whole host of other fantastic cultivars in a range of colours)
Eremophila glabra, Eremophila maculata (again a whole host of colours and forms)
Grevillea 'Lemon Daze', Grevillea 'Ruby Jewel' or Banksia 'little Eric', Banksia 'Black Magic'.
Anigozanthus 'Bush Fury' - this one flowers continually
For fruit eaters (and nectar feeders) - dwarf forms of Lilly Pilly - Syzigium australe and Acmena smithii or Austromyrtus dulcis
For seed eaters - Grasses / strappy leaved plants like Dianella spp, Lomandra spp and Poa spp
For insect eaters - smaller growing forms of Leptospermum spp, Kunzea spp, Callistemon spp, Westringia 'Deep Purple'
..... and that about sums up my garden in the height range that you are after. Plant a few of these and you'll create a bird paradise. Choose flower colours that you like, look them up on the net and try and choose a selection so that there's always something in flower, seed or fuit. If you type indigenous nurseries into your browser you should also be able to locate local forms of most of the plants I've listed above if you'd prefer to give those a go. Good luck and post some pics when you're finished!!
Since indigenous gardens are in such short supply in urban areas & attract the native birds local to your area it seems to me to be difficult to go past planting indigenous species.