Bird-Friendly Gardening is a wonderfully helpful book for creating an bird-friendly environment based on your location. There are lots of beautiful charts and pictures to assist with the identification of birds currently visiting/living your area as well as pictures and specialized charts that enable you to choose the perfect plants/flowers to attract and enrich the native birds/wildlife.

I highly recommend Bird-Friendly Gardening for bird lovers and gardeners alike.

This is a informative and organized book that explains the purpose and process of gardening for birds.

The author provides actionable tips, useful designs, and helpful information for people who want to create backyard habitat to help birds.

This book is a great selection for backyard birdwatchers, conservationists, and people who are interested in gardening for wildlife.

Thank you Quarto Publishing Group – Cool Springs Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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If you are a bird watcher this book is perfect for you. Learn how to bring the birds to your home and continue watching year round.

I really liked this one...I was looking for a book that would help me draw birds to my yard and this one went above and beyond, in my opinion. There were some really great pictures and charts and they pretty much tell you everything about what you need to plant or have in your garden to draw all of the available birds in the area to your yard. They tell you about the plants that will bring them, the trees that will bring them, birdbaths, feeders...everything you need to know about your particular area and what plants, trees, flowers, and grasses will thrive in your area...I took a lot of information away from this one and there is a good chance I will actually buy the physical copy down the road.

This shares garden ‘tips’ for designing your garden(s), as well as sharing a love of birds, and how to encourage birds to return to visit by providing them with plants, flowers, as well as necessary sources of water.

Regarding plants that will draw birds to you, this also covers the best plants to have around you that are the most beneficial to them, which may differ depending on where you live. The best plants for each area are included. By creating a garden that offers them what they need, they will be more likely to return.

This book shares a great deal of information, and some beautiful photographs, as well, but this is primarily a lovely guide to create a setting that they will feel welcome in.


Pub Date: 19 Mar 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Quarto Publishing Group - Cool Springs Press, Cool Springs Press

This would be a great book for someone who enjoys birdwatching and wants to attract more species to their yard. The early part of the book is a tutorial about birds: diet, habitat, migrations, and predators. Then the book transitions into garden projects. Each project uses bird symbols to indicate which types of birds would benefit from that plan. There are specific projects (e.g., grow your own birdseed, hummingbird haven) as well as general ones (e.g., modifying windows to prevent window strikes). Each project has a brief description, symbols of birds attracted to the plants, a table of plants that includes basic info about each plant, and often a planting illustration. The projects have a nice balance of information and illustration. Projects range from containers to large open spaces, as well as different soil types (I was particularly interested in the moisture-rich garden given I have clay soil). The book also includes some profiles of birders who are also gardeners, adding interest to the book.

This book is a great guide for those who want to create wildlife habitats. I'm fairly experienced at that, yet found lots of interesting ideas that I'd like to try. I also appreciated that there is something for everyone, whether big or small yard and in various parts of the US. I'd highly recommend this resource!

Thanks to Quarto Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing an advance review copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

Fun Garden designs to help support the birds during all of the seasons! I absolutely love my bird houses and watching the birds that stay and those that come back every year and now thanks to this book I have ideas on how to incorporate the perfect plants, flowers, water sources, etc. to keep them happy and encourage other, more rare birds to visit as well. I thank Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group-Cool Springs Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was such an informative read. I learned so much about birds. I can't wait to incorporate these plants and flowers into my home garden.

This is an extremely thorough book offering ideas, plans and information about gardening for the birds in a huge range of ways. It’s extremely heavy on charts, photos and text. There is a wide variety of information on all kinds of gardening needs, from balcony and condo gardens to southwestern and low water gardens to shade gardening to gardening for specific birds and tons more.

I read a temporary digital copy of this book for review.

"With hundreds of North American bird species facing population decline or at risk of extinction, right now is the perfect time to create a home-based habitat garden that offers birds the resources they need to safely feed, migrate, breed, and thrive.

Thankfully, making your outdoor space a secure and comfortable haven for many different bird species isn’t a Herculean task. It’s a matter of understanding the needs of our avian friends and how native plants, combined with purposeful garden design, can help meet those needs. And that’s exactly the know-how you’ll find here, outlined in a simple-to-follow, actionable format by author Jennifer McGuinness."

I enjoyed perusing this book but it was not what I expected. Keeping bird populations up also means being familiar with native species of plants that are for your particular area. While pretty, many of the plants/flowers people plant have no benefit to pollinators and birds.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for this ADC. TBP March 2024

Bird-Friendly Gardening gives newbies quite a bit to get started, but there is so much more than what the book offers. I was hoping to find more projects for landscaping ideas but there are only a few diagrams of gardening guides and hardly any for small spaces. I also felt this book failed to tell readers of the threat of invasive birds such as House Sparrows and Starlings. If you're truly passionate about native birds you must get to know how to control these birds from killing native birds.

The upside to this book is it covers a lot of native plants to bring into your yard to help keep birds coming for years to come. What most people fail to realize the majority of our American home's landscaping is all Asian plants that offer no benefit to our native birds or pollinators, for that matter, and Yes, your amazing Crape Myrtle is an Asian plant that offers no benefits to our birds.

Another tip I wished this book would have covered. The majority of our major box stores in the US only offer Asian plants, you'll have to research in your area to find places that sell native plants, and some natives carry crazy expensive price tags. Through the years, I have found that my Masters Gardeners offers a yearly native plant sale that I attend and Etsy is also a great resource to buy native seeds.

Go and explore a birding world that will amaze you for years to come.


Thank you Netgalley for providing this title for review

What a spectacular book for gardeners who wish to draw more birds to their plantings. The photos and illustrations are beautiful, the tips and projects seem very doable, and the content is info-rich. A fine gift for any bird-loving gardener!

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. This is a great book about gardening for birds. Excellent examples of plants that will attract birds to your yard.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publishers and of course the author for gifting me this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

5 star review!

Wonderfully informative book with beautiful photography. A lot of tips on how to encourage and care for birds in your back garden.

Thank you for the early access to read and review this book.

A nice guide for beginners planning an outdoor space for birds or even looking for aid in finding birds in public spaces. As an experienced birder I did skim some sections that by now are common knowledge. This is a topic I have been interested in for a few years now, and have applied this information to my birding strategies for locating species like warblers. I did find the owl content to be particularly helpful, as that’s not information included in many of the other resources I’ve reviewed. I would like to see a more advanced and in depth work on this topic in the future, but this is a great place to start.