Plus, discover how bird species are faring in your town.

Thanks to all of you who replied to my recent article about seeding a meadow in winter; I answer a few below. Growing natives outdoors from seed is easy and extremely cost-effective. And seeing what works — and what doesn’t — is fun and educational.

I have lost count of my seed experiments, but here’s a sampling: in Rhode Island, a sunny meadow, a woodland garden, and a parterre of four beds of flowering perennials; in Florida, pots of seeds of about a dozen hard-to-find, salt-tolerant species ordered from individual sellers via eBay and Etsy or hand-collected by me. Some of my seed experiments will be utter failures, but they don’t cost much and I learn from them.

Dear Avant Gardener, I'd love to know if you recommend any seed mix for a shade meadow — and I'm talking about 90-100% shade. — John

Absolutely! If you are in the eastern two thirds of the country, I suggest you try Prairie Moon's Shady Woodland Seed Mix. If you're located elsewhere, check out the other suppliers I listed in Seed a Meadow Now for Big Savings. Either way, you can direct-sow it now using the method I outline in that article.

Technically, this mix will produce a woodland garden, not a meadow, but I imagine what you want is a combination of native plants. Given the depth of your shade, some species will do better than others and (hopefully) spread over time. Keep in mind that shade plants tend to take more growing seasons to reach full size than sun-loving ones.

You can also create your own woodland mix by buying seeds for a subset of the species in this mix, as I did this fall. I selected 12 shorter shade plants and spread their seeds under a tree; I especially love common bur sedge (Carex grayi), also called “mace sedge” for its adorable spiked green flowers; I will be thrilled if it grows, because other sedges (like Pennsylvania sedge) are famously difficult to grow from seed. You can create an all-shade mix native to your state by using the filters in the seed section of Prairie Moon’s site.

Dear Avant Gardener, Thanks so much for snow seeding information. Clay recently spread out in a couple long swaths from our foundation. Hard as a rock, currently under a couple inches of snow. What are your recommendations for snow seeding these areas? — Laura, Petoskey, MI

I’m glad you liked today’s article and I appreciate the follow up question. Prairie Moon’s Tallgrass Exposed Clay Subsoil Seed Mix is made for conditions like yours. As they note,

Often during construction, bulldozers remove the topsoil and organic matter, leaving exposed clay that can present harsh conditions for plant growth. The tough species in this seed mix, including Purple Coneflower, Yellow Coneflower, Wild Bergamot and Big Bluestem. — Prairie Moon Nursery

Order the seed and supplies, then wait for a fresh snow before spreading the seed-and-sand mix. The seeds will absorb more sunlight than the snow, allowing them to sink down into the fresh powder, safe from birds and squirrels.

Dear Avant Gardener, I am an avid desert gardener and am in charge of our local Master Gardener Native Flower Seed Bank. I would love to have you help spread the word about National Seed Swap Day on January 27th. We will be giving away free local wildflower seeds to the public at the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve near Vegas on the 27th. — Gail, Las Vegas, NV

Love the idea of native seed exchange! I encourage other readers to search for “seed swap near me” in Google and Facebook. Many of these will focus on vegetables to start inside, but some offer native species to plant outdoors now. See Save Money with Winter Sowing for how to nurture small amounts of seed. Thank you for the idea, Gail.

Happy sowing, everyone!

— The Avant Gardener

P.S. Does it sound as if I’m shilling for Prairie Moon? I have no relationship with them. I just love their extensive selection of native seed species, clear plant descriptions, and excellent search functionality.

Why, How, Wow!

Why?

You’ve heard the stats: North America’s bird population has declined by a staggering 3 billion breeding adults, or nearly 30 percent of the population, in just 50 years. Now you can see how much species in your city have decreased or increased over the past ten years, thanks to an analysis of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s crowd-sourced eBird data by the Washington Post. For example, cedar waxwings declined 16% during breeding season in Petoskey, Michigan, where one of this week’s advice-seekers lives.

Fortunately, cedar waxwing populations are increasing in other areas, thanks to reversion of fields to shrublands and forests — their nesting habitat — and landscaping with berry trees.

Cedar Waxwings feed mainly on fruits year-round. In summer, they feed on fruits such as serviceberry, strawberry, mulberry, dogwood, and raspberries. The birds’ name derives from their appetite for cedar berries in winter; they also eat mistletoe, madrone, juniper, mountain ash, honeysuckle, crabapple, hawthorn, and [invasive] Russian olive fruits. In summer cedar waxwings supplement their fruit diet with protein-rich insects including mayflies, dragonflies, and stoneflies, often caught on the wing. They also pick items such as scale insects, spruce budworm, and leaf beetles directly from vegetation. – AllAboutBirds.org (The Cornell Lab).

I encourage you to use the gift link in Related Resources, below, to see which bird species are languishing — and thriving — in your city.

How

My primary goal in gardening and at Dear Avant Gardener is to reverse biodiversity decline. We can do this by planting diverse native plants and adopting landscaping practices that support native wildlife, especially insects.

To me, the greatest challenge of transforming a yard from mostly turf to a rich mix of native plants is creating a structure that we’ll enjoy — aesthetically, emotionally, practically, even economically — as much as the birds and bees. That’s why students in our Transform Your Yard course will spend six weeks framing their wants and needs and then creating a rough master plan.

We’ll be teaching a quick-and-dirty method we developed working on Zoe’s yard. Whether you use pencil and paper or a tablet, as below, I believe this method produces better designs than the detailed scale plans I learned to make as a Master Gardener. Once you have an overall plan, the next step is selecting plants. (OK, now I am shilling:)

Wow!

Pete and I enjoyed listening to and watching a museum of cedar waxwings congregating on our snag in Rhode Island last summer. Yes, "museum" is the collective noun for this very social species!

Related Resources

• Curious how bird species are faring in your city? Find out with this interactive feature in the Washington Post [gift article link].

• There’s still time to join the course, which starts February 6 and costs $625; learn more and register at Transform Your Yard.

• Love language or know someone who does? Order A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Wild Gatherings: Quirky Collective Nouns of the Animal Kingdom or, for young kids, A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns.