How to Grow a Goldfinch Garden
Text and images by Anna Champagne
Goldfinches are a joy to have in the backyard. Their cheerful yellow color brightens the landscape, and their bubbling song is a delight to hear. Watching their acrobatics as they twist, turn, and hang upside down to eat their favorite foods can also be highly entertaining.
American Goldfinches are found in floodplains, weedy fields, forest edges, and shrubby corridors throughout North America. The other two types of goldfinches in the United States, the Lesser Goldfinch and Lawrence’s Goldfinch, have smaller territories and sometimes prefer drier habitats. However, if you have the right environment, all three goldfinch species will come readily to your backyard.
You can create the perfect habitat by growing a goldfinch garden. This garden can be as small as a planter or two on your patio or as large as an entire backyard. It just needs one or more of the things goldfinches like best: food, water, and a place to raise their young.
Plants for a Goldfinch Garden
Seed is the key to attracting goldfinches. Although goldfinches will eat twig bark, plant buds, and maple sap, they are primarily seed eaters. The regurgitated matter they feed their young is also mainly made up of seeds. Goldfinches will eat flower, grass, weed, and tree seeds. A few of their favorites are outlined below.
Native Thistle
Goldfinches adore thistle and will gobble it up when they find it. The original genus name for the American Goldfinch, Carduelis tristis (which has since been changed to Spinus tristis), is derived from Carduus, the Latin word for thistle. So, it makes sense that some other names for goldfinch are thistle finch and thistle-tweaker.
Thistle has an undeserved reputation as a “bad” plant. Although some forms of thistle are invasive, many are not. They provide essential food sources for pollinators (like bees and butterflies) and avifauna (like goldfinches). These “good” thistle plants are the ones you want.
There are 62 species of thistle native to North America. You can find thistles native to your area in Native Thistles: A Conservation Practitioner’s Guide. This free guide is from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, an international nonprofit organization focusing on pollinator and endangered species conservation.
Goldfinches love eating thistle. Butterflies, like this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, are also attracted to thistle and often feed on the nectar.
Plants in the Asteraceae Family
Thistle is a plant in the Asteraceae family, also known as the composite, aster, sunflower, or daisy family. Goldfinches are really fond of the tiny seeds that the plants in this family produce. Some of the best flowers for a goldfinch garden include:
Asters (perennial)
Black-eyed Susans (perennial)
Coneflowers (perennial)
Sunflowers (annual)
Zinnias (annual)
The Audubon Native Plant Database can help you find goldfinch-friendly plants native to your area.
Birdfeeders in the Goldfinch Garden
If you are waiting for plants to grow or want instant goldfinch interest, you can hang up a mesh-style tube feeder filled with Nyjer. Nyjer is a tiny black seed loved by most goldfinches. Nyjer is often called thistle seed, and at one time, it was labeled and sold as such in stores. But Nyjer is not a thistle seed. It is the seed of Guizotia abyssinica, an annual herb in the Asteraceae family typically grown outside North America. The Wild Bird Feeding Institute trademarked the name Nyjer in 1998 to avoid false advertising.
If you want to attract a broader range of birds in addition to goldfinches, you could offer sunflower seeds. Goldfinches will eat sunflower seeds in and out of the shell. Seeds in the shell can be provided in tube, hopper, window, and platform feeders. Sunflower hearts and chips (seeds without the shell) spoil quickly and should only be placed in bird feeders that do not allow moisture to collect.
Mesh-style feeders like this one hold small seeds like Njyjer so that it doesn’t blow away in the wind. American goldfinch can cling to the mesh or perch on the bottom tray to eat the seed.
Water in the Goldfinch Garden
One of the easiest and best ways to attract birds to your yard is by providing fresh water in all four seasons. This rule applies to goldfinches as well. Birds enjoy a free meal, but under reasonable circumstances, they can get that on their own. Water can be harder to come by, especially in the winter or during a drought.
Birds need fresh water to drink and bathe in. You can provide both with a traditional bird bath, water fountain, pond, or another water source. The vessel does not need to be large, and the water does not need to be deep. An inch or two is all that is required. Small birds, like goldfinches, can drown in deep water. Providing a rock or something to perch on or ensuring the bath has a rough surface on the bottom can also reduce drowning dangers.
You can purchase a bird bath or fashion one from an existing container. One item that works particularly well is a planter saucer (the little tray that goes under a potted plant). It is cheap, easy to clean, and doesn’t leak. See instructions from the National Audubon Society to learn how to make a bird bath from a plant saucer, cake pan, or a similar container.
Nesting Sites in the Goldfinch Garden
Not every garden is suited to goldfinch nesting. Male and female American Goldfinches usually look for shrubby areas in the open near tall grass. Nests are often built in a small sapling or shrub where branches provide support on the bottom and shade on the top. The nest's foundation is usually securely lashed to branches with spider silk.
Nest sites are also chosen based on the availability of nesting materials. Female American Goldfinches use fibrous material and the fluffy down of thistle and milkweed plants to line their nests and cushion their eggs. They spend nearly a week weaving twigs, rootlets, fibrous threads, and soft down into a cup-shaped nest. The nest is so tightly woven that it can hold water when finished.
American Goldfinches nest later than many other North American birds because they like to wait for the milkweed, thistles, and other wildflowers to produce the fibrous plant matter they use to line nests and the seeds they use to feed their young. Their peak nesting time is in late July and early August.
Lesser Goldfinches are more likely to nest in the forked branches of trees in suburban parks, gardens, and backyards. The female builds the cup-like nest from twigs, bark, leaves, spiderwebs, cocoons, yucca fibers, and other plant materials. Nests may be a few feet off the ground or as high as 50 feet in the air.
Lawrence’s Goldfinches also nest in the forked branches of trees. They prefer to nest in California sycamore trees or oak trees, such as blue oak, canyon live oak, coast live oak, etc. They have also been known to nest in clumps of mistletoe. Nests are relatively high up, usually 10 feet or more.
You can learn more about goldfinch nesting on NestWatch.org, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology nest monitoring program site.
Flocks of goldfinches, known as “charms,” sometimes congregate in weedy fields in the summer.
Goldfinch Garden Tips
Here are a few other tips that may help you grow a goldfinch garden.
If you have a bad spot of grass or a hideous patch of weeds you want to cover up, a no dig garden might be an option. This type of garden, popularized by Charles Dowding, involves building a garden bed directly on top of unused grass or weeds. You can learn how to make a no dig garden on his website.
You can start small if you’re on a budget or don’t have the time or ability to care for an ample garden space. A five-gallon pot, some potting soil, and a pack of zinnia seeds can be turned into a fast-growing garden that attracts goldfinches, hummingbirds, and a range of other pollinators.
Avoid pesticides and herbicides in your goldfinch garden. This guide from the American Bird Conservancy can help you find alternative methods to control insects: Take Flight From Lawn Pesticides: Tips for Organic, Bird-Friendly Gardening.
If possible, place your goldfinch garden where you can see and enjoy it. Nature watching is a rewarding experience and has been shown to positively impact our moods and well-being.
Goldfinches like zinnias so much that they eat the seeds while the flowers are still blooming.