As a birder, this partnership is for you: Garden for Birds is providing free monthly guidance about using native plants to create bird-friendly habitats, and the interactive Biodiversity Map will allow you to track and share your restoration efforts alongside thousands of other birders working to improve backyard habitat. An exciting new partnership between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Garden for Birds program and Homegrown National Park is encouraging gardening with native plants and making it easier for you to access the resources needed to create bird-friendly habitats.
Homegrown National Park also provides a way for you to join like-minded birders to document your improvements and the birds you see over time, while you join a growing movement across the United States and Canada to restore biodiversity by gardening with native plants. "Planting native plants is something that not only will be good for you and the environment, but it's also possible wherever you are living or working," added Becca Rodomsky-Bish, the Project Leader of Garden for Birds.
The partnership will also help participants to see their contribution as a part of a larger conservation effort. Every native plant added to a garden provides food and cover for insects, especially caterpillars, which in turn support birds and other wildlife. And every new area registered on the map helps make the collective impact of these individual actions more visible to the birding community.
"Homegrown National Park sees the Biodiversity Map as a hub that not only allows people to visualize where native planting is happening and where it still needs to begin, but also as a tool for people to understand the depth of this movement and how their choices affect nature and the birds around them," said Grant Jensen, Marketing Manager for Homegrown National Park. "People now understand that we have the power to bring back nature where we live simply by planting natives in our yards and by encouraging our communities to do the same."
Across North America, more than 50,000 individuals have already documented their habitat restoration progress on the Biodiversity Map. Together, these individual gardens, patios, window boxes, and the landscaping in our yards add up to a powerful restoration movement – and your space can be part of it! To get started, add your habitat to the interactive Homegrown National Park map to join the Garden for Birds Project. And explore the Garden for Birds bird-friendly habitat planting resources at Gardenforbirds.org
Share your backyard birding experiences and photos with The Birding Wire at editorstbw2@gmail.com