We Built A DIY Garden To Attract Wild Birds

So you live on a suburban block, not the traditional quarter acre of days gone by, but the smaller footprint that's become more standard. A modest-sized garden means modest ambitions for the gardener, right? Absolutely not. In 2020, Rachel and Mike Green downsized from two sloping hectares to a flat battleaxe block in the hills on the eastern fringe of Perth. Their previous garden was a showcase of habitat planting, but they're proving the smaller dimensions here are still an excellent opportunity to invite the local wildlife in. We've squeezed as many local plants in as we can, especially for the birds. I'm a passionate lifelong bird watcher, and this helps a lot. I bird watch in the bush as well, not just here. It's my primary hobby in life these days. Filling a garden full of native plants is one thing, but what's been your strategy to really maximise the habitat value of this garden? Well, I think the first thing is that we need food all year round. So it's not about having flowers in spring, which is easy. It's about, is there still food in January, February, March, April, May, all the way through? So food might be something like this Eremophila, which is flowering now and providing honey to the honey eaters, but in three months' time, those honey eaters will need other food because that will have stopped flowering. But also the birds need insects. So birds don't just eat nectar. Lots of people think it's about flowers, but it is also about nuts. It's about seeds. We've had Banksias. We've got Hacias that have nuts. We've got Darnellas that have seeds and berries. It's about insect plants. See, there's insects on the plants, on the connoisseur list down there at the moment. So they need a lot of things other than just flowers. What kind of birds are visiting the garden now, Mike? Lots of honey eaters, the Western Wattlebird, which you can sometimes hear in the background. There it is. The Red Wattlebird, White-cheeked Honey Eater, plus a few insectivorous birds like the River Swistler. We've got the Ring-necked Parrot, which locals call 28. And of course, there's the Striated Pardalope, which is nesting right now. As the plants have grown, the birds have increased. We get so excited whenever we see a new species. And so we started with two. And in three and a half years, we've gone to 41. In measuring the success of this space as a habitat garden, Rachel and Mike are not satisfied with anecdotal evidence. Well, we're a bit mad. And for the last three years, every single day when we're here, we've logged the birds. So we keep a list of all the birds that we've seen so far and tick them off every day if they appear. And if new ones arrive, we add them to the list. And we've charted them so you can see that there is a general increase in the bird species over the years. The other thing we've got are trail cameras. They record them. And we've seen even a White Magpie that we've never seen before. And at the back, White-browed Scrub Wrens come in. And we don't see them. They're so secretive, but they're on the trail camera. And the ultimate is to have birds nesting because if you can provide a habitat garden where they feel safe and where they feel secure and there's enough nesting material and they nest, then you're encouraging especially the little birds to be safe because there is always the threat of extinction. We have so far had three birds nesting. We've got the Striated Pardalopes nesting in a gourd on the fence. And they've had three broods. We found a Brown Honey Eater's nest in the Hardenbergia. And we've had New Holland Honey Eaters nesting in a rare plant from the South Coast, the Heike of Victoria. And they nested this year in April, which is an unusual time to nest. So it means that we were providing them with enough food in the garden. Yay. What was this garden like when you first moved in? Rather plain and boring. The front garden was lawn, roses, deciduous barren pears and a few lily pillies, nothing else. And where we're staying now was wood chips. Within weeks, we'd had the front garden, the lawn was up and all the roses came out. But the birdbath, that was the nucleus. Everything else was planted around that and it grew very quickly. Within three months, we'd got an obvious native garden coming along. When we put a plant in, we make sure if we can, it's local to the local government area as shown on flora base. And if it does really well and the birds like it, we plant more of those. If it doesn't do well or the birds don't like it, we take it out. Avoid having a garden where everything's at the one level. So here we've got like the acacias ligna is growing and that will be taller. Then this is medium and then we've got lower shrubs. So different birds need different habitat heights. Prickly plants are really important. Some of the smaller birds, they need to be able to escape from predators. And we've got hakea lissacarpa here, which we know we've got the data small birds will nest in. We're trying to get a jungle. It's really great because you actually have to do less gardening because there are fewer weeds, less raking. We want all the plants to grow together to cover the ground so that the birds can just hop from one to another. So beyond the plants that we've spoken about, what other initiatives do you put in place to bring birds in? Water. Mike put in our very first bird bath in the first week that we were here and we got brown honey eaters almost immediately. But also we've got reticulation on the bird bath because if you're going to have a bird bath, you've got to provide clean water, but consistent water. This is your handiwork. What are the key features of this design? It's about the right height and it has a perch. That's very important. A bath net on its own works, but if you put a perch there, the birds come in and have a look around first before they take the plunge, literally. And we find that our perch is just randomly around the garden for birds to land on. It's good for photography too, because you can aim your camera at the perch and wait until a bird comes and it's done. We have lots of rocks around so that reptiles can find a place to hide and also to sunbake. I see there's some insect hotels dotted around the garden. Yes, they're mainly for bees. We get lots of resin bees land in those and build their nests. We do our best to keep insects happy around the place as well. What we wanted to do was to prove you can do habitat in a tiny garden, and we think we've proved that. The success of the garden is really important because we can show other people what's possible and it means we can inspire other people to look after the birds. Has it worked out how you'd hoped it might? This place has worked out much better than we thought. It rapidly became clear that, yes, we could do a lot. It just took off and it was an amazing thing for both of us. I just love it. What would be your advice to someone who was thinking about starting a habitat garden? Do it, because if you start, then you can build on it. However small, start with water. And then if you've only got a really tiny garden, go for pots. The birds evolved with the local plants and we found that the local plants attract more birds than plants from anywhere else. And by local, I mean local government area. So go local, go water, start now.