Here's What To Grow In Illinois If You Like Birds

For much of the country, including Illinois it’s been a long, grueling winter. No one knows this better than Patch, which has written about terms we didn’t even know existed — looking at you, “bomb cyclone.”

But fortunately spring has sprung, despite the chilly temperatures lingering in Illinois. And many people are welcoming the monthslong reprieve from snowy driveways, icy roads and slushy sidewalks.

This is especially true for gardeners in Illinois champing at the bit to grab their trowels and garden forks.

Americans love getting outside, digging, planting seeds in the dirt and watching their flowers, vegetables, fruits and trees grow. If you’re one of them, why not do it in a way that’s beneficial for the environment and attracts birds?

It’s simple. Grow native plants.

These are plants that grow naturally in Illinois and are the “ecological basis upon which life depends,” according to the National Audubon Society.

Luckily, Audubon makes it easy for you to help the environment. The group, which advocates for protecting birds, used data compiled by the North American Plant Atlas of the Biota of North America Program to recommend plants native to your ZIP code.

Best of all, the site even tells you which plants attract certain types of birds. This means if you’ve always wanted to look out at orioles, cardinals or finches in your backyard, now you can. It also means those wishing to keep pesky woodpeckers off their roofs should probably avoid American Elms and Ash-Leaf Maples.

To see what the group has to say about Illinois, click here.

Here are some recommendations we think you might like:

• Alternate-Leaf Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)
• A small deciduous tree or large multi-stemmed shrub that typically grows 15 to 25 feet tall with distinctive tiered/layered horizontal branching. Flowers give way to bluish-black fruits on red stalks that mature in late summer.
• Birds attracted: Woodpeckers, cardinals, thrushes, crows and jays
• American Basswood (Tilia americana)
• Also known as American Linden. A medium to large deciduous tree that typically grows to a height of 50 to 80 feet. In late spring, it produces profusions of fragrant, pale yellow flowers that attract pollinators.
• Birds attracted: Woodpeckers, crows and jays, orioles
• American Hazelnut (Corylus americana)
• A deciduous, rounded, multi-stemmed shrub that typically grows 8 to 16 feet tall and naturally occurs in dry or moist thickets.
• Birds attracted: Finches, orioles, wood warblers, thrushes, sparrows

The native plants listed under “best results” were hand-selected by Audubon experts in your region.

“They are important bird resources that are relatively easy to grow and are available at native plant nurseries,” the site says.

Over the past century, the group says the continental United States lost 150 million acres of habitat and farmland to urban sprawl. Urbanization has taken “intact, ecologically productive land and fragmented and transformed it with lawns and exotic ornamental plants,” Audubon says.

Human-dominated areas no longer support functioning ecosystems, Audubon says. And the remaining natural areas are often isolated and too small to support wildlife.

Native birds need native plants and the insects that come with them, the group says. Because most landscaping plants in nurseries are exotic species from other countries, many native insects don’t like eating those plants.

“No insects? No birds,” the organization warns.

Patch reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images