Gardens for Songsters — Cages for Criminals!

Forest and Bird, Issue 40, 1 May 1936, Page 11

Gardens for Songsters Cages for Criminals!

How Gardeners May Be Hosts Of Sweet-Singing Guests

A new spirit is slowly but surely taking possession of people. There has been a change from a passive possession of an area of land about a house for lawns and shrubs and flowers, to a positive and an

active desire to do all possible to attract into gardens colonies of songsters and feathered friends.

The cage idea must be combated throughout the land. It is being realised that liberty is a precious thing, that life is colourless

without its joy and its beauty. There is no beauty about a cage but a veritable misery about prisoners enclosed in cages. Gardens are opportunities—opportunities for education, for inspiration, for enjoyment. Their contents of shrubs and trees may be arranged so that birds shall be guests at liberty and the gardeners hosts. Erection of bird baths in such positions that stray cats shall prowl in vain, and the distribution of food are other means adopted. The Forest and Bird Protection Society can supply particulars of the best way to make one’s garden a happy hunting and singing ground for birds. There are many trees and shrubs that are suitable for winter food purposes. Among them may be mentioned ngutukaka, puriri and the exotic tree lucerne.

Another typical New Zealand plant which might be used more in gardens is the common cabbage tree. Highly ornamental at all stages of growth Cordyline Australis is a splendid bird shelter and food plant. In a town garden the boundary is the best place to plant it. The young plant may be placed in the same row as other native hedge plants such as taupata coprosma retusa (Baueri), also a good berry yielder —

in the certain knowledge that the cabbage tree will hold its own and ultimately overtop the hedge, producing a straight trunk eight to twenty feet high. The tree is quite at home in a windy exposed situation, the leaves clattering together in high winds, only a few being shed in gales. In some seasons, like the present one, the flowers are abundantly produced containing nectar for the honey-eat-ing birds, these flowers being followed by an abundance of white berries greedily eaten by fruit-eating birds.

Starlings and White-eyes seem to be particularly fond of the fruit. The dead and much-branched stalks form a twiggy mass which persistently remains attached to the tree. The nectar brings insects around and these attract fantails which may often be seen hawking flying insects. The cabbage-tree is easily raised. The innumerable seeds germinate readily if the berries are gently crushed, mixed with sand, and kept moist in a seed pan. The trunk sprouts if buried in damp earth. One way of securing vigorous plants is to bury an old cabbage-tree trunk horizontally. It will soon sprout along the length of the trunk, which may then be cut in sections and replanted. Sprouts will readily grow. It has been stated _______

that chips will sprout if they lodge in a suitable damp spot. Many fence lines in Wellington at present are a sight owing to the white berries. Any bird lover could not do better than experiment in raising the abundant seed this year.