Why Autumn Is the Hungriest Time of Year

By September, the garden has quietly changed shift. Insects are thinning out, the last broods of the summer have fledged, and the birds that stayed put suddenly have far more mouths to feed and far fewer easy meals. Add the arrivals from Scandinavia — redwings, fieldfares and the occasional waxwing — and it becomes clear that autumn is when a garden either helps or hinders.

At this point many birds switch from a largely insect diet to fruit and seed. That switch is the reason a well-planted garden can carry a resident blackbird, a pair of robins and a noisy flock of goldfinches through the coldest weeks without any supplementary feeding at all. It is also the reason the tidiest gardens are often the emptiest. A border stripped bare in October offers nothing when the hard frosts come.

Shrubs That Earn Their Space

If you plant nothing else this year, plant something with berries. A handful of well-chosen shrubs will feed birds for months, and many of them are handsome enough to justify the space on their own merits.

• Rowan — berries from late August, eaten fast by thrushes and blackbirds. Plant where you can see it from a window.
• Hawthorn — the backbone of a native hedge, with haws through September and October and dense, thorny nesting cover into spring and summer.
• Holly — brilliant for a slow larder. Birds often ignore holly berries until late winter, leaving a reserve that lasts when everything else has gone.
• Guelder rose and spindle — both native, both beautiful in autumn colour, and both heavy croppers in a damp or clay soil.
• Crab apple, blackthorn and dog rose — hips, sloes and small fruits that hold well into the colder months.
• Cotoneaster, pyracantha and berberis — generous croppers for smaller gardens, and excellent trained against a wall or grown as a loose boundary hedge.

Bear in mind that holly and some other species need both male and female plants for berries, so check before you buy. A named self-fertile variety saves a lot of head-scratching.

Plan for a Long Harvest, Not a Short Feast

Variety matters more than volume. A single rowan will be stripped in a fortnight; a mixed planting of rowan, hawthorn, holly and ivy will keep fruit available from August right through to March. Ivy deserves a special mention here, because its black berries ripen in late winter when almost nothing else is on offer, and its dense foliage shelters insects, roosting birds and hibernating butterflies.

Bare-rooted shrubs are the best value, and November to March is the window to plant them, as long as the ground is not frozen or waterlogged. Prepare a hole wider than it is deep, plant at the same depth the shrub sat at in the nursery, firm it in and water it well. Mulch around the base but keep the mulch clear of the stem. For a hedge, set plants 45–60 centimetres apart in a staggered double row; in three or four years you will have a thick, berried corridor that birds will use as a highway as well as a pantry.

The sunny side of a fence, a pot of compact pyracantha by a doorway and a scrambling honeysuckle over a shed all count. Small gardens can still be generous gardens.

Leave the Seed Heads Standing

There is a particular kind of beauty in a border left alone in October — and birds appreciate it more than we do. Seed heads not only feed finches and tits, they also hold insects through the winter and offer shelter from wind and rain. Rather than cutting everything down, choose a section and leave it until late February or March.

• Teasel and globe thistle — goldfinches will hang off these for hours.
• Sunflowers and rudbeckia — fat, oily seeds that suit greenfinches and tits.
• Echinacea, aster and sedum — late nectar for straggler insects, then seeds for the birds.
• Nigella, poppy, honesty and cornflower — generous self-seeders that repay a lazy autumn.
• Fennel, dill and parsley left to bolt — tiny seeds adored by goldfinches and linnets.

Leave the stems standing 30–45 centimetres tall when you do cut back in spring. Hollow stems become nesting cavities for solitary bees, and the seed heads you knock to the ground will feed ground-feeding birds for weeks.

Gentle Management Through the Cold Months

The simplest conservation act of all is to put the secateurs down between September and February. Pruning now removes the very berries you have grown, and tidy hedges are rarely nesting hedges. Delay cutting until late winter, once the fruit has gone, and cut on a slight A-shape so light reaches the base.

Leave windfall apples and pears under the tree for a week or two — thrushes, blackbirds and redwings will work through them. Rake fallen leaves into a corner rather than bagging them; they shelter worms, beetles and hedgehogs. Keep a shallow dish of clean water at ground level and refresh it daily, because birds need to drink and bathe even in freezing weather. And if you do hang feeders, wash them fortnightly with hot soapy water and rinse thoroughly, since crowded feeding stations are where disease spreads fastest.

Think in Layers, and Think Long Term

Birds need food, water, shelter and somewhere safe to nest — and the garden that provides all four is the one that hums. A native hedge, a berried shrub or two, a patch of standing seed heads and a small tree will do more for wildlife than a whole shelf of feeders. Plant it this autumn, resist the urge to tidy, and by next December you will be watching redwings strip the holly from the warmth of your kitchen.