Birdscaping for Wisconsin and the Great Lakes Region: The 50 Best Native Plants to Attract Birds to Your Midwestern Garden, by Mariette Nowak
University of Wisconsin Press, 2025
352 pages, paperback
Are you searching for help transforming your wasteland of a lawn into a bird nirvana, and do you live in the upper Midwest? Then, look no further. Mariette Nowak’s delightful Birdscaping for Wisconsin and the Great Lakes Region: The 50 Best Native Plants to Attract Birds to Your Midwestern Garden is the resource you need!
Since the 2009 publication of Doug Tallamy’s popular Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, interest in landscaping with native plants has burgeoned, along with a profusion of “how to” titles, often dry and unduly technical. But Nowak’s book tacks away from this approach. As a follow up to Nowak’s Birdscaping in the Midwest: A Guide to Gardening with Native Plants to Attract Birds, this new and more focused title is generously illustrated and infused with Nowak’s sparkling prose. Nowak, a longtime volunteer with Wild Ones, a non-profit connecting people with native plants, and a former director of Wehr Nature Center in Franklin, WI, creates rich tableaus of interconnectedness between plants and the creatures they sustain, especially our birds.
Three introductory chapters give a brief overview of “birdscaping,” site preparation, planting, and how to protect the birds you are attracting to your yard. The remainder of the book is divided into five sections, the first of which is devoted to the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. The next four sections focus on species associated with particular habitats, including woodland, prairie, savanna, and shrubland, and the 10 best native Midwestern plants suitable for approximating those habitats. Each section briefly describes the habitat the gardener is working to emulate, lists typical bird species of the habitat, and then goes into deep detail about the plant species Nowak suggests. For each plant, Nowak describes why it is valuable to birds and other wildlife and how to grow it. Many “plant” entries actually include several species of the same genus. Thankfully, Nowak offers native plant options beyond the suggested ones for those of us with smaller and/or less than ideal growing spaces. And she’s not above noting the potential downsides of certain native plant species such as trumpet vine (Campsis radicans), a hummingbird favorite, which will quickly engulf your yard if left unchecked.
Nowak’s book is jam-packed with fascinating information, but it never feels overwhelming or excessively academic. Her love for all the creatures inhabiting her gardens emanates from every page. I found myself wishing I could parachute into her yard to steal a peek at her color-soaked Eden.
Birdscaping is that rare book that melds science and practical knowledge gleaned from years of careful observation into a joyful, wondrous story. One of the best books written on natural landscaping for birds, it is sure to become a dog-eared classic in every bird lover’s library.
April D. Campbell, MD grew up in rural Connecticut surrounded by wildness. Her love of birds was inspired by the whirling Barn Swallows that nested in her family's heritage barn. Upon retirement, Dr. Campbell founded BIPOC Birders of Michigan, an organization devoted to introducing marginalized communities to the joys of nature. She currently resides in Ann Arbor with her wife, three cats, and a very stubborn dachshund.
