The Low-Maintenance Flower That Grows Beautifully Under A Bird Feeder

Landscaping around wildlife allows you to beautify your outdoor space while at the same time ensuring it provides food, water, and shelter for birds and pollinators. Adding certain plants under your bird feeder can have a double benefit: It helps you attract a more diverse variety of birds to your yard, and it easily upgrades your space. One great candidate for this niche is yarrow (Achillea millefolium), a perennial that's native to the U.S. 

Yarrow provides a low-maintenance source of flowers when grown in the right conditions. It's a lovely option for growing under bird feeders, and you can even plant it below hummingbird feeders to reap extra benefits, as those winged marvels also feed on yarrow flowers. The undemanding plant can bring additional benefits to the wildlife in your yard on top of the food you supply via your feeders.

You may already have yarrow on your list of perennial plants to add to your yard to attract birds. There are a couple of different reasons why this pretty option is beneficial to our feathered friends. The first is the seeds of the yarrow flowers, which many beautiful birds — such as finches, vireos, and waxwings — eat as part of their diet. Another benefit that yarrow offers birds is that it's a host plant for at least five different types of moths. That means that caterpillars will most often be present on Achillea millefolium plants, and in turn, those crawly larval insects will provide protein-rich nourishment for birds.

It's always nice when we can grow beautiful flowers while keeping maintenance low, as we can with yarrow. This plant does so much while asking little in return. Plant it under bird feeders in full sun as long as the soil drains well, and it'll do a great job feeding butterflies and bees. There's no need for intensive irrigation or fertilizing since yarrow grows best in poor soils that have average moisture or are on the dry side, in USDA Hardiness Zones 3 to 9.

Once you've checked that your zone and conditions are a good match for yarrow, you can choose which type to plant under your bird feeder. Know that these flowers grow to be 1 to 3 feet tall, so if you're trying to soften the appearance of the shepherd's pole that your feeder hangs on, a taller variety might work best. That being said, there are many different yarrow varieties that add stunning perennial color to your yard. You'll find gorgeous options in Achillea millefoliums, with blooms in a wide palette, including shades of pink, yellow, purple, and red. However, if your main priority is wildlife care, you may want to stick to the common variety that has white blooms for planting under your bird feeder, since there is some concern in the scientific community that cultivated varieties of native plants don't provide the same quality of nutrients for insects, which in turn affects birds.