Whether you live in a big city or on a remote mountaintop, you can create a backyard that birds, butterflies, bees, and your family will all adore.

With a little planning and planting, you can start right now to bring more wildlife into your backyard. Not only will it help your garden, but it will also give you and your family a chance to experience more of the natural world around you.

Bees Make a Big Difference

You may not want bees to get too close to you, but your garden is another matter. The importance of honeybees in pollinating your plants and helping them produce more cannot be matched by other means. By incorporating bee-attracting flowers into your yard, you'll increase the yield of all of your fruits and veggies.

Bees visit flowers that have nectar, and they especially love white, yellow, lavender, and blue flowers. They look for flowers that have easy access, which means single blossoms are the most popular. And, like all beneficial wildlife, bees can be harmed by insecticides. It's best not to use these materials in or near your garden or, optimally, anywhere on your property.

Bring on the Butterflies

For butterflies, the key to success is to include plants that serve the needs of each of their life stages. An adult needs nectar sources and a place to lay eggs. The larva (caterpillar) needs plants to eat and a place to form a chrysalis. Adults searching for nectar are attracted to flowers with red, yellow, orange, pink, or purple blossoms. Dense clusters of small flowers such as hollyhocks, marigolds, zinnias, verbenas, and mint plants work very well.

It's vital that your nectar-producing flowers be grown in open, areas that receive full sun from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. That's because most adult butterflies will not feed on plants in the shade. Pay special attention to nurturing butterfly caterpillars. After all, without any caterpillars, you won't have any butterflies! Don't worry, unlike moth caterpillars, butterfly caterpillars will not cause leaf damage.

A Variety of Birds

The basic rule of attracting birds to your yard is simple: provide them with water, food, and shelter. There are many ways to do this and some of them require a few years of planning, planting, and nurturing before they pay off. As a first step, you can add a few bird feeders, like a hummingbird feeder or finch sock. To enhance your bird habitat further, add a shallow birdbath to a shady part of your yard.

Next, consider adding shrubs and trees that will provide both food and shelter for birds. They love fruit trees, maples, oaks, dogwoods, and many types of berry-yielding bushes. In your garden, include sunflowers, cosmos, marigolds, coneflowers, and zinnias and let the birds eat the seeds from them. Finally, think about putting up a birdhouse or two that would appeal to the some of the birds in your area. You can buy some built for small birds (wrens, bluebirds) or for big ones (owls and hawks).

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