Sorie, How close you would plant them would depend, based on the shrub's ultimate spread and width. I normally plant shrubs half their mature width from a fence or building since I would expect a shrub to grow outwards in all directions. You can plant the shrubs in grass or in a cleared area. It depends on what look you are going for and also on how low or high maintenance you want your area to be.

For a low-maintenance area, I'd rototill the area first and rake out all the grass roots and such. Then I'd put down a good-quality landscape fabric, cut holes in it, plant the shrubs and then add several inches of mulch. We find it easier to maintain the landscape if we are not having to mow around the shrubs and the shrubs grow better when they are not having to compete with grass roots. Another option would be to plant ground cover or flowers beneath the shrubs, but even when we do that, we put down the landscape fabric and mulch to keep things low-maintenance.

There are probably hundreds of various shrubs available and it is hard to just pick names out of my brain and throw them out there. If I was going to grow shrubs for birds and butterflies, I'd look for types that bloom for the butterflies and for evergreens that provide shelter for birds year-round. We grow several kinds of hollies because they are very tolerant of both very wet and very dry conditions, which is important with our erratic weather and slow-draining soil. Our Burford hollies are in bloom now and are bee and butterfly magnets. Blooming shrubs like butterfly bushes and crape myrtles are very popular here but not evergreen. Yaupon hollies of various types also are popular landscape shrubs in my part of the state---the one I like best for wildlife is possumhaw holly and it is deciduous. Some of the shrubs I like down here in southern OK where we are in zone 7b and fairly close to 8a probably are not cold-tolerant enough to thrive in NE OK so I hope someone who lives in your part of the state will list some of their favorite shrubs for you.

Thanks Dawn. I've got crape myrtle butterfly bush started and ROS. that garden was dug up. Guess that's the way to go. Really want things for birds and butterflies.

Have a nice Easter!

Azalea is a common one here.

Well, ROS isn't much of a wildlife attractor, azaleas have a mild hummingbird attraction for a very short period in the spring. I'd focus on the viburnums or cornus species for berries that will attract for a much longer period.

Look at natives, it's what the animals of the area are geared to find and use...not exotics like crepe myrtle, rose of sharon, and butterfly bushes.

Sorie, You're welcome. I hope you are having a lovely Easter too.

We do have a lot of natives on our property, but they are mixed into the woodland and on its edges where they are happy, for the most part, in dappled shade. Up in the full sun around the house, we mostly have hollies and oak trees because they tolerate dry clay soil and 110 degrees as well as they tolerate wet clay soil at 10 degrees. When in bloom, the hollies are visited by tons of bees. Under the pecan tree where I have several natives for the bees and butterflies, we have roughleaf dogwood and possumhaw holly, which both are deciduous, and I've transplanted persimmons that came up in my garden out of the garden and into the yard. On the edge of the woods near the garden, we have wooly buckthorn and in the woods we have a lot of wild cherries, native virburnums and tons of other native trees and understory plants that produce fruit wildlife like, though not the kind of fruit we humans would want to eat.

I don't worry as much about planting natives as part of our landscaping because we have 14.4 acres of pretty much nothing but natives. Almost all the trees around our house were transplanted from our own woodland. Our landscaping around the house, such as it is, is mostly just grass, groundcovers, trees and shrubs because anything "imported" that blooms is just deer chow anyway.

When I had a house in town, I had to work a lot harder to provide native plants for the hummers and butterflies. Here I just try to not kill the ones that we have. It drives Tim crazy that I want him to mow around every single wildflower plant on our property, but for every flower he cuts down, there's some form of flying critter that needs that flower. Having said that, while I love the native wildflowers in generally, I ruthlessly remove them from most of the veggie garden, leaving them to bloom only along the fenceline edges. Most native wildflowers reseed too vigorously for me to let them inhabit the fenced garden or they'll take over every square inch of space in no time at all, and I learned that the hard way.

Dawn