Fruiting Shrubs Your Bird Garden Needs

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Did you know that fruiting plants and birds rely on one another?

Native plants produce the right fruit at the right time to nurture the native bird population. In turn, the birds eat the fruit and distribute the seeds, helping to ensure the plant's survival. The type of fruit that plants produce changes throughout the year as the nutritional needs of the birds change. By adding all three of these different types of fruit to your garden, you can draw birds to your garden year round.

Spring and Summer: Sweet Fruit for Energy

Nesting season demands a great deal of energy and stamina from birds. They have to mate, build nests, lay eggs and raise chicks, all while warding off predators and competitors for their nesting spot. As late spring waxes into summer, both people and birds are treated to a sweet bounty of seasonal fruit. Backyard fruits ripen and produce, and gardeners find themselves fighting to keep hungry birds away from their strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries.

You can aid the local bird population AND give them something to eat besides your prized peaches by planting ornamental trees and shrubs that fruit around the same time.

Perhaps the most effective ornamental option is the serviceberry tree (top right,) which blossoms white in early spring, produces blueberry-like fruit beloved by birds in early summer, and closes out the growing season with fiery fall color.

Purpleleaf Sandcherries (top left,) can also bear a small crop of edible fruit (more like a plum than a cherry,) which birds will snap right up.

You may find good options to encourage nesting visitors already in your neighborhood. Wild mulberry trees (bottom left) are common in our area, and very popular with birds. Only the females set fruit, so keep a lookout for the blackberry-like fruits to appear in June to see whether or not your local mulberry trees are fruit-bearing. You may also have wild raspberries nearby. Look for thorny brambles and leaves that are green above and white below.

Autumn: Fruits to Fatten Up On

As summer draws to a close and the first hint of frost appears in the air, birds build their reserves of fat. The migratory birds use this stored energy to sustain them during their long journey south, while our overwintering birds prepare to withstand the winter cold.

Some great fruiting options for this time of year include beautyberry (top left,) chokeberry (top middle,) shrub dogwoods (top right,) spicebush* (bottom left,) mahonia† (bottom middle,) and roses that bear hips‡ (bottom right.)

Elderberries and certain varieties of viburnum also work well, but most viburnum need cross-pollination for fruit set. If you're looking to add a fruiting viburnum to your landscape, our horticulturists would be happy to go over options with you.

Adding fall-fruiting plants to your landscape encourages the overwintering birds to view your garden as a year-round home, and increases your chances of getting a look at the often jewel-like migratory species as they head south for the winter.

*Note that spicebush require both a male and a female plant to set fruit.

†Mahonia is one of the few plants on this list that isn't native.

‡For a low maintenance, compact shrub rose that bears hips, try OSO Easy Cherry Pie. It covers itself with single, candy apple red flowers during the season that attract pollinators, followed by attractive, red-orange hips in fall.

Winter: Break On Through To the Other Side

Often brightly colored for high visibility, winter fruits hang on during the coldest months, cheering both birds and people.

The fruits of winter tend to be astringent, sour, hard, mealy, or seedy, providing essential food to our overwintering birds a little at a time. They're also among the first foods that the returning migratory birds will encounter in spring.

You may have berried junipers already in your neighborhood. Not only do these evergreens provide an important source of food, they also give small birds a good sheltering spot from predators. Many ornamental junipers are available, but make sure to look for a type that has berries, such as the blue-needled 'Star Power.'

Both 'Tiger Eyes' staghorn sumac (top left,) and 'Gro-Low' fragrant sumac are attractive ornamentals, but they fill very different landscape functions. Despite the 'sumac' name, these are native relatives of the Middle-Eastern spice, not the poisonous plant that will cause you to break out in a rash. 'Tiger Eyes' has golden, lacy leaves, and grows into a small tree or clumping shrub, vaguely reminiscent of a palm tree. Fragrant sumac is a glossy-leaved groundcover.

Winterberry Holly is the showiest of the winter fruiting plants, bearing abundant clusters of bright berries up and down its stems. The fruiting plants are females, and they require a compatible male growing within 50' in order to set fruit.

Ornamental crabapple trees typically bear small, dry fruits that range from insignificant to quite showy. Regardless of whether humans notice them, even when they're dry and shriveled at the tail end of winter, they provide an important food source for birds.

Although not a native, cotoneasters (middle right,) are a versatile option, both for landscape color and for drawing winter birds. They may be used as small shrubs or groundcovers.

Bayberry is a large shrub that requires both a male and a female to set its unusual, waxy white fruit. Aside from providing a winter food source for birds, the leaves of the plant can be used as a spice in lieu of bay leaves, and the berries are used to make bayberry candles.

Cranberry bush viburnum (bottom right) is one of the few viburnum that will set fruit without cross pollination. The fruit typically hangs on far into winter. They also feature delicate white lacecap flowers in spring and vivid fall leaf color.

While there are many ways to attract birds to your garden, the fruit-bearing shrubs do double duty as beautiful landscape plants. Select trees and shrubs that will provide fruit all year round, and you'll be treated to a lively display of both plants and birds!