If you enjoy watching wildlife, hopefully you have a little seating area tucked somewhere into your garden where you can sit, relax and watch the visitors to your backyard habitat. Even if your outdoor space is small, you can still bring the birds and butterflies up close by including habitat containers on your patio and near to your living spaces.
Even in an urban setting, window boxes and container plants attract both hummingbirds and butterflies (Photo of beautiful window boxes in downtown Spencer, MA copyright Ellen Sousa.)
Habitat containers are just a fancy name for any outdoor container with plants because really, any outdoor potted plants can provide some basic resources for wildlife, including shade, shelter, food and nesting sites for tiny beneficial insects, birds and even insect-gobbling amphibians such as toads.
Flowering annual container plants such as penta, salvia, petunias and verbena provide lots of nectar and to feed native bees, hummingbirds, butterflies and other welcome garden visitors, and if you allow late season plants go to seed, you can even watch birds such as goldfinches, chipping sparrows and chickadees dining on the seeds.
Even if you garden in the city or a tiny space, just about the easiest way for you to bring wildlife up close and start increasing the biodiversity of your surroundings is to plant a large container, hanging basket or a window box bursting with colorful flowers and plants.
When choosing plants for habitat containers, try to include a variety of flowering and fragrant annuals, perennials, shrubs and even dwarf evergreen trees to provide the widest range of habitat resources for your visiting wildlife friends. In colder climates, you may have to bring less-hardy container plants into an unheated garage or protected area for the winter to keep root systems from being winter-killed.
Some excellent nectar, seed or berry producing plants ideal for growing in containers, hanging baskets and window boxes include:
Dwarf Zinnia 'Profusion' attracts many butterflies to its cheerful flowers. Photo copyright Ellen Sousa.
- Ageratum (Floss Flower)
- Button Zinnia (short varieties)
- Annual phlox
- Verbena
- Single-flowering Tagetes and Calendula (Marigolds)
- Penta
- Heliotrope
- Petunias, Supertunias and Millionbells (some varieties have more nectar than others)
- Herbs such as sage, lavender, chives, parsley, coriander
- Agastache species
- Coralbells
- Sedum
- Compact flowering shrubs such as blueberry, weigela ‘Midnight Wine’, Virginia sweetspire (‘Little Henry’), and coral berry ‘Amethyst’
- Small ornamental grasses such as little bluestem, pennisetum, sedges and rushes
Containerized shrubs, small trees and sometimes even hanging baskets can provide nesting opportunities for tiny songbirds who prefer to nest off the ground surrounded by the safety of thick vegetation.
Itea virginica 'Little Henry' has lightly fragrant early summer flowers that attract butterflies and pollinators, and in the fall its foliage takes on a beautiful fiery hue to rival the red fall color of burning bush (Euonymous alata), an ecologically invasive plant that is reducing biodiversity across New England.
Gorgeous flowering annuals such as red bloodflower/milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) can provide essential foliage for monarch butterfly caterpillars, and even small grasses in containers are used as food (host) plants for the caterpillars of tiny butterflies such as skippers:
Rushes are interesting grasslike plants that do well grown in containers with good moisture retention. Although this Fiber-optic rush is not native to the US, it is related to the native American rushes that are host plants for several butterfly species. Photo copyright Trudy Walther.
Group your habitat containers together to create larger visual impact and make it easier for tiny pollinators and butterflies to find from above. A cluster of containers on a patio will even attract toads, who like a cool, damp and shady area to spend their days. If you regularly water your containers so that water drains out the bottom of pots, look around and under your containers for these fun and gentle amphibians, who will enjoy the moisture and will help you out by dining on any slugs, grubs and other invertebrate insects that might be damaging your plants.
A grouping of native plant containers at New England Wild Flower Society's Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA. Photo copyright Ellen Sousa.
How are you using containers in your beautiful wildlife garden?
[Ellen Sousa gardens, farms, writes and teaches from Turkey Hill Brook Farm, a small horse farm in the Worcester Hills of central Massachusetts.]
© 2010 – 2013, Ellen Sousa. All rights reserved. This article is the property of BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us
About Ellen Sousa
Great advice! If everyone just planted a container for wildlife, what an impact that would have. I can attest to the nectar-producing power of the Callibrachoas (“Millionbells”). The butterflies hang out there all day.
I just love Millionbells cascading over the side of a pot or window box. They are so cheerful and are self-cleaning, much easier than petunias…
What a wonderful reminder! This summer we planted two large post we ‘rescued’ roadside and planted them each with dwarf weigela, black sweet potato vine and trailing petunias. The colors were lovely, but it was the non-stop visits from bees and butterflies and hummers that really made the patio a prime observation spot! Next year we’ll add many more containers close to the house.
Sounds like a great combination, Lisa! Would love to see pics of those containers. Weigela is popular with the hummingbirds with those pretty rose-pink flowers, and adapts so well to container culture.
What wonderful advice, coupled with stunning photographs! You can have a beautiful wildlife garden even if your only outdoor space is a high-rise balcony in New York City!
Carole recently posted..Beautiful Wildlife Garden Kathy Green
Last spring, I planted several containers with California Native bulbs and annuals. It was quite a show, and the hummingbirds just loved it!
Town Mouse, bulbs in a pot are a great idea for spring color until the annuals take over. You are lucky to have some great native West Coast bulbs to choose from….
Thanks for the tips Ellen. This is a topic I’ve been meaning to research and write about. I know there are a lot of people who find container gardening less intimidating than planting beds when they are new to gardening. As you say, containers are also a great way to get plantings up close on patios and balconies.
I was going to ask about which of the plants you recommend are native, but then that depends which part of the country a person is in. I’m in prairie country and most of the prairie natives are known for their very extensive root systems, which doesn’t work so well for containers. I think the shade/woodland natives which grow here in Eastern Kansas have shallower root systems though and could make good container plants.
hi Alison – yes, going through my list, some are native to certain parts of North American, such as the annual phlox (Texas native) and some types of agastache, but a good book such as William Cullina’s Native Wildflowers of North America (published by the New England Wild Flower Society) is a good reference to figure out what exactly is native to a specific region. You are very right that some deep rooting plants (including dry region natives that drive their taproots way down into the subsoil to find moisture ) are not ideal for container growth…plants with shallower root systems such as the coralbells (heuchera) and sedum would work well – both have varieties native to areas in the US and many of the ones sold in nurseries are hybrids with some native in their parentage.
Blueberry and Virginia Sweetspire (both on my shrub list) are native to many areas of the US (east coast, not sure about further west) and the Coralberry cultivar ‘Amethyst’ that I mentioned is also a hybrid of the native coralberry, I believe…