Keep digging in

In hopes of keeping my brain fertile this winter, I've been imagining a new landscape coming this spring.
Though the New Year has just turned as I write this, I just broke a sweat walking the dog. The unseasonable weather is freakish, but still serviceable for digging out much of one new garden area today.
Even so, the periods of light are short, and I can stay mentally active while the sun's down by researching the varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees that will benefit wildlife that fly by the yard in the months and years that I'm here, and hopefully beyond.
My education actually started with warm-weather walks in the Crooked Creek Wildlife Management Area and its success in drawing birds and bugs.
A few of the flowers and trees were unmistakable, like the probably naturally-occurring trillium and the dogwoods, but others escaped my knowledge of flora.
So I decided to look up Crooked Creek on the Internet to see if there were a planting legend to go by.
Sure enough, some clicking around led to recommended plantings for birds and several game animals.
Through "habitat," I arrived at the plant materials page, which gives tips for both the uplands and the wetlands of Virginia. It gives helpful information about where to get the stuff.
Apparently for landowners with larger tracts to develop into habitat, the site recommended some suitable varieties that I wouldn't have thought of, as well as some old standbys.
The plants big bluestem and little bluestem and indiangrass as well as kousa, red osier and silky dogwoods, persimmons, indigobush and crapapple all rang familiar. These same varieties went into the Devils Den Nature Preserve to attract wildlife and wildlife watchers to the Fancy Gap area.
The site also suggested plants less familiar to me, like chokeberry and chokecherry, chickasaw plum, roselow sargent crabapple, eastern gammagrass, birdsfoot trefoil, hazelnut and more.
It listed a couple of viburnums, arrowwood and blackhaw, which is good, because I'd seen a few at nurseries around here and had been on the fence about them.
Food plot species include wheat, rapeseed, proso and browntop millet, buckwheat and of course black oilseed sunflowers. 
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ pages list the expected benefits to wildlife, and I intend to sow those that provide food and shelter for songbirds.
Other links connected me to Web pages and files with more information.
It's gratifying to see so many suggestions from the Backyard Conservation worksheet already in my yard.
Providence (or previous owners) have supplied cherry, walnut, dogwood, redbud, sassafras and oak trees, bittersweet, Virginia creeper and grape and milkweed and clover and violets either here or as close as the fence row.
To these, I've added aster, butterfly bushes, butterfly weed, coneflower, bee balm, phlox and salvia and hollies.
I strive to use native plants, because those are better able to survive with just rainfall and little extra watering. An effort to cross-reference these suggestions led me to the native plant database at www.wildflower.org — a new discovery that's quite helpful.
It was that database that made me realize that spicebush and sassafras are both members of the laurel family and that I've got to have more of both.
Spicebush not only supports birds and butterflies, but can host the eastern tiger swallowtail and the spicebush swallowtail caterpillars. Ditto for sassafras plus the palamedes, a rare find in the mountains of Virginia.
There's plenty more to learn, but at least I can make a list to approach my favorite nurseries to see if they'll have my varieties on hand or if they need to be special-ordered to prepare for spring.
I'd love to be able to install lots of trees, like the eastern cottonwood, which is beneficial for tiger swallowtails, the state bug; the elusive mourning cloak; the more visible brushfoot, the red spotted purple; and monarch-doppleganger known as viceroy. But my small plot will support only so many trees along with planned herb and veggie gardens, too.
The overhead utilities also make shrubs and flowers the more likely choices.
So with my mind's-eye, I'm trying to see shrubs attractively grouped according to size and color aesthetics, covering a gradual slope down the hill that won't grow tall enough to interfere with the overhead lines.
Arrangements seem assured of spicebush and sassafras (with its single-, double- and triple-lobed leaves and gorgeous fall color) with viburnums mixed in.
Holly trees would be a good possibility, with the many berries for food and cover for nesting birds. Clustering the trees could serve as a windbreak, though space is still an issue.
Serviceberries are said to provide year-round food for birds, but are subject to cosmetic diseases and insect problems.
Other questions arise, such as: what should the mix be of deciduous and evergreens to provide year-round cover for the birds? Should I plant sunflowers so that they will loom over my planned herb garden? And can I get it all done in a timely and an orderly way?
Just have to keep digging into my research and be ready to go in May, I guess.