How to Attract Goldfinches to Your House With Plants

Growing plants to attract goldfinches means more than just providing food sources. It also includes providing plants for shelter, nesting sites and nest materials. The goldfinch’s scientific name, Carduelis, is from the Latin for thistle, "carduus." Native thistles provide an important food source, in addition to soft down to line goldfinches’ nests. While most birds breed in the spring, goldfinches are one of the few birds to breed as late as midsummer. They wait until thistle, milkweed and other plants have gone to seed so they will have plenty of nesting material and food for their young.

Annual flower seeds: cosmos, zinnia, sunflower
Perennial flower seeds: Echinacea (purple coneflower), aster, black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia)
Small tree for transplanting: red maple, sugar maple, silver maple, sweet gum or tulip poplar
Evergreen tree for transplanting: pine, cedar or cypress

Instructions

- 1
  Designate an area of your yard as a naturalized habitat. Allow some weeds to grow, such as thistles and dandelions. Leave an uncultivated — or lightly cultivated — area at the transitional zone between a wooded area and an open area.
- 2
  Sow annual seeds each year of tall-stemmed flowers such as zinnia, cosmos and sunflower so that goldfinches can clasp the stems easily. Leave flowers on the plants, and allow birds to eat the seeds that the flowers produce. Collect enough seeds to sow the following year for your goldfinches.
- 3
  Grow perennial wildflowers as food sources, including purple coneflowers, asters and black-eyed Susans. Allow the flowers to turn brown and go to seed without deadheading them.
- 4
  Plant one of the following maple trees as a favorite nesting site for goldfinches: Acer rubrum (red maple), A. saccharum (sugar maple) or A. saccharinum (silver maple). Grow a hedgerow of densely leaved plants, such as elderberry shrubs, as a protected nesting site.
- 5
  Provide deciduous trees for summer shelter that are favored by goldfinches, such as sweet gum and tulip poplar. Provide evergreen trees for winter protection, such as pine, cedar and cypress.

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