This is bird note. A bird feeder is a lovely addition to any yard, attracting beauties like this rose-breasted grossbeak.

But buying enough birdseed to keep all those birds satisfied can run up a big bill.

Homegrown National Park co-founder Douglas Talamy says that growing

native plants in your garden can provide a balanced diet for birds.

I think the most common misconception about native plant gardening is that

native plants are messy. They're not

neat, they're not manicured, it's wild. But that's not necessarily true he

says. The bright petals of native sunflowers provide a pop of color and a nutritious meal for goldfinches and sparrows.

And a hedge of native hollies produces fatty berries that draw in fruit-loving birds, like thrushes and waxwings.

Tellamy wants to show gardeners that native plants can be a beautiful and functional way to promote biodiversity and feed the birds at home.

The notion that plants are more than decorations, that they have ecological functions, and that native plants perform those functions much better than non-native plants.

That's probably the real key there, because then people okay my garden is it's going to be

pretty but it's also going to be functional.

To learn more about Homegrown National Park and how to take part in their simple grassroots

solution to the biodiversity crisis, visit birdnote.org.

I'm Ariana Rimmel.