Planning a Bird-friendly Garden Using a Planting Palette

Planting Palettes are common tool used in landscape architecture as away to access and plan for landscape changes. Use this planting palette to inventory your gardens while focusing on expanding your plant options for birds and pollinators.

Taking Stock

What do I have and what do I need? These questions come to mind the deeper you dig into the world of planting for birds and biodiversity.

This tool is intended to help you take stock of what you have and identify gaps in your gardens. Using this information you can develop a plan to maximize the resources you are providing year-round.

Download Planting Palette

Instructions for Using Planting Palette Tool

1. Identify the common and/or scientific names of the plants in your garden and add them to the yellow section. iNaturalist or PlantSnap might be useful apps to help with identification.
   • Then using different colors (pink and red are used above) to highlight when the plant blooms and when it produces berries, seeds, nuts, or other resources for wildlife.
   • Note the color of the bloom or fruit if you are documenting the different colors in your garden. Color in the circles with markers, pencils, or crayons for a quick visual of your garden color palette.
   • Use the notes section for anything special you want to document about this plant – what it feeds, interesting observations, etc.
2. Distribution of flowers allows you to note how many flowers you have blooming in the different months. ONLY use those that you have existing. Add them up and put a number in the box. If you have gaps or lower numbers of flowering plants in different months, considering focusing on those months for added blooms.
3. Distribution of berries/seeds allows you to note how many food resources you have available in the different months. ONLY use those that you have existing. Add them up and put a number in the box. If you have gaps or lower numbers of resources in different months, considering focusing on those when making garden additions.
4. Proposed section (green) can be used to add new plants you are considering adding. If you identified gaps during your existing inventory, use this section to choose plants. The tools on this page, specifically the Lady Bird Johnson Plant Finder Tool, will allow you to narrow your search by time of year.

Other Planting Palette Examples

Want to design your own template for inventorying your plants? Here are other examples you can use to guide your process.