Besides being created from mostly recycled materials, I want my garden to provide us with fresh fruit and vegetables and be a lovely place to share with friends and family. But perhaps most importantly, I want it to be wildlife friendly.
With all this in mind, as a complete gardening novice, I muddled through last year, enjoying happy accidents and learning lots of lessons.
My favourite lesson was this:
Gardening for wildlife is not only incredibly rewarding, it is also incredibly easy!
Just think about who you’d like to visit and make it a nice place for them to be. Think about food, water and shelter:
~ Sew a mini meadow.
I sewed a mini meadow in the centre of the garden to encourage aphid-eating creatures to visit.What a glorious, magical success that was!
Filled with pretty white daisies, yellow daisies, red poppies and gorgeous blue cornflowers, it was a riot of tumbling colour for weeks on end. And on a sunny day, the six inches above it were literally buzzing with life as bees, wasps, ladybirds and hover flies gently bumped into each other, drunk on the heady delights.
~ Grow plenty of herbs.
Herbs are not only great for attracting wildlife but smell gorgeous, provide a range of colours and textures, often have pretty flowers, and taste great too! What more could you ask from a plant?
Try chives (you can eat their flowers too), thymes, rosemary, lavender and sage. They are all easy to grow and will provide joy and sustenance for many years.
~ Grow native plants.
Provide local wildlife with the environment they need.
Choose gorgeous native plants like foxgloves. Think about winter food too; plants that will provide seedheads or berries later in the year are perfect. Sunflowers will provide a wonderful display in Summer, through to Autumn, when they will help feed the birds with their seeds.
~ Don’t be too tidy!
Encourage a messy corner.
Leave the leaves accumulated over Winter for as long as you can. Have piles of rocks and logs. Let plants tumble and be a little riotous. Don’t be too fussy about weeds.
~ Love weeds.
Leaving what are commonly thought of as weeds will also encourage wildlife.
Bees adore thistles, and tiny pink sweet nettles provide them some food early in spring when little else is around. Lots of insects enjoy daisies and buttercups. Some would say a weed is just a flower in the wrong place.
I would ask, “How can a flower be in the wrong place?!”
~ Build houses.
Shelter is important for all small creatures.
Building homes for hedgehogs, toads, or various insects is very easy and needn’t cost a penny if you use recycled materials.
~ Provide plenty of water.
Birds and hedgehogs will appreciate water.
Hedgehogs need water to drink, so leave a saucer or two in overgrown areas or along a known hedgehog route. Birds will enjoy water for a bath as well. Almost any container will provide an improvised bird bath. They love using this old seed tray and have happily used a water-filled bucket or plant pot too.
Make sure you raise it well off the ground or leave it in an open space with plenty of nearby perches, so they can be safe from cats.
~ Keep up a regular supply of food.
Leave food out for hedgehogs and birds.
You can feed hedgehogs cat or dog food (not bread). I have yet to try it, but I wonder how you can be sure it’s enjoyed by a hedgehog rather than neighbourhood cats?
Leave a variety of different bird food out, depending on your local birds and on the season. The peanut net above needs replacing, which reminds me of another important thing to remember when feeding birds; be consistent. If you feed them, they will start relying on your food and may travel some distance to it, using up valuable energy.
~ Avoid use of any nasties.
It really can be done. If you work with your garden to encourage the good guys, they will help you keep the pests down. Hedgehogs and toads love slugs and there isn’t a much sweeter sight than watching a thrush teach it’s youngster how to extract a snail for tea.
Not that I really have anything against snails, I could spend hours watching them and think they’re rather cute! And since I turned the expanse of knee high grass into a proper garden, there have no longer been battalions of them. I rarely see them now. Perhaps it’s because most of the flowers in the garden are weeds wildflowers, which slugs and snails don’t seem particularly keen on. I think the stones around the beds probably help to deter snails too.
Hoverflies, wasps and ladybirds are all expert hunters, ridding your garden of aphids, so encourage them to visit by providing a wide range of their favourite plants and somewhere warm and snug, to curl up safe and sound.
It’s all about balance, really. Allowing your garden to find it’s own equilibrium. Don’t worry too much about unwanted guests, if damage is limited. Look on the positive side, instead; if you have slugs, you will probably attract a cute little snuffly hedgehog, or a beautiful, melodic song thrush.
:0)
