Wildlife Gardening: Ilex Winterberry, 1 by ViburnumValley

ViburnumValley wrote:
Birds absolutely will eat the fruit of winterberries, but they also prefer many other types of fruit that soften up or are tastier earlier in the winter months. This is why winterberries are such great plants for the garden and wildlands -- they please the human eye as well as feed wildlife for an extended period of winter.

This performance will always depend on the types and volumes of birds that you have around, and the availability of other forms of forage. Less variety of fruit may very well mean that your winterberries are stripped of fruit earlier in the winter (as mine were here, because of the 2007 Easter freeze destruction of many other plants' ability to flower/fruit last year). Heavy bird pressure with little else to choose from, or a particular species of bird that just MUST have the winterberries -- well, you get the picture.

To me, winterberry fills a great slot in the landscape because it tolerates much wetter sites than many other shrubs commonly used. Next to a faucet or a downspout where it is wetter more than it is drier (and if you have acidic soils -- no sweat!), well, you couldn't make a winterberry any happier.

I am growing about eight clones of the winterberry group here in central KY on heavier circumneutral clay loams. The wettest sites do best, but these tough plants soldier on through droughts like last year's with a minimum of support.

Everyone should give them a try, especially northeastern gardeners where many of the named selections hail from.

Here's an image of how much fruit can fit on happy plants. These are 'Winter Red' winterberry en masse at a spot just below where two pipes from a roof downspout system run off.