Welcoming Wildlife in Your May Garden: A Month of Nurturing Nature
May is a truly vibrant and crucial time in the wildlife garden, brimming with the energy of new life. Parent birds are diligently feeding their hungry chicks, while bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies, and hoverflies eagerly seek out nectar-rich blooms. The skies welcome the return of migrant birds like swifts, swallows, and house martins, and beneath the foliage, hedgehogs begin their mating season.
Let's embrace this period of renewal and actively support the wildlife that shares our gardens with these simple yet significant actions:
Essential Wildlife Gardening Jobs for a Flourishing May:
Respect Nesting Birds: Hands Off the Hedges!
- Don't Trim Hedges: It's vital to avoid trimming hedges from May through to October as this is prime nesting season for many bird species. If you have a hedge that absolutely requires attention, proceed with extreme caution. Use hand tools only and meticulously check for nesting birds before making any cuts.
Provide Sustenance for Busy Parents and Fledglings:
- Feed the Birds Thoughtfully: Adult birds expend considerable energy raising their young and will appreciate a nutritious boost. Offer dried mealworms, a favourite among blackbirds, robins, starlings, dunnocks, and magpies. Sunflowers, peanuts, and fat balls are also popular choices for a variety of feathered visitors.
- Offer Fresh Water: Don't forget a reliable source of fresh water for birds to drink and bathe in. If using a deep dish, place rocks inside to provide safe perches for smaller birds. While larger birds enjoy deeper water, smaller ones and fledglings are safer in shallow areas. You might even observe birds enjoying a mud bath, especially when the ground is dry and sandy.
Create Simple Havens for Diverse Creatures:
- Build Basic Wildlife Habitats: Start with something as simple as stacking a few logs or twigs in a quiet corner of your garden. This humble pile will become a welcome home for centipedes, beetles, amphibians, and small mammals.
- Embrace Leaf Litter: Resist the urge to clear away fallen leaves. Blackbirds love to forage amongst them for tasty bugs, and many invertebrates seek shelter underneath. As an added bonus, decaying leaves enrich your soil with valuable nutrients. Interestingly, slugs often prefer munching on fallen leaves over your precious new plant shoots.
Fuel the Pollinator Powerhouse:
- Grow Pollen-Rich Plants: Wildflowers are incredibly important, providing vital food sources for pollinators and facing the threat of disappearing from our landscapes. By planting them, you offer pollinators a diverse and essential diet.
- Introduce Herbs for Pollinator Variety: Adding herbs to your garden provides pollinators with a different array of nectar and pollen. Plant herbs like borage, chives, lavender, rosemary, and oregano in a sunny spot and watch as bees flock to them.
Rethink Your Definition of a Weed:
- A Weed is Just a Plant in the Wrong Place: While dandelions might be considered unwelcome in pristine lawns, they are a valuable early source of nectar and pollen for insects, adding a cheerful splash of yellow to the spring garden. Butterflies, honeybees, and numerous other pollinators adore them. Consider allowing some "weeds" to flourish as they provide essential food and even egg-laying sites for various wildlife species.
Give Your Pond a Wildlife-Friendly Makeover:
- Enhance Your Pond Habitat: If you haven't already, introduce aquatic plants such as hornwort, brooklime, and water forget-me-not to your pond. These plants offer shelter for aquatic insects and larvae, creating a thriving underwater ecosystem that will soon attract frogs, toads, newts, and the fascinating larvae of dragonflies, damselflies, and beetles.
Embrace the Beauty of Untamed Grass:
- No Mow May: Join the growing movement and refrain from mowing your lawn throughout May. This simple act allows insects hatching from eggs in the grass a crucial chance to mature into adults.
- Create a Mosaic of Grass Lengths: Wildlife and wildflowers thrive in varying grass lengths. Some prefer short grass, others medium, and some long. Over the coming year, consider creating a mosaic of different grass lengths in your garden or simply reducing your mowing frequency to once a month. You'll be surprised at how quickly wildflowers begin to appear naturally, and you'll undoubtedly witness an increase in wildlife activity. To further enhance diversity, sow wildflower seeds in pots or directly into the soil if you haven't already. Once pot-grown seedlings are robust, transplant them into your grassed areas.
Protect Wildlife: Say No to Chemicals:
- Don't Use Chemicals: As the weather warms, you'll likely notice aphids and other insects that many gardeners consider pests. Resist the urge to use chemical pesticides or herbicides. There are often less harmful ways to manage these situations, and it's generally best to intervene only if a plant is genuinely suffering.
- Gentle Pest Management: If aphids are severely damaging a plant, try removing them manually with your fingers.
- Selective Weed Removal: If certain weeds are becoming overly dominant and suppressing other plants, carefully dig them up by hand.
- Observe, Don't Interfere Unnecessarily: Remember that even a wildlife garden requires some light management. While occasional intervention might be needed to assist wildlife, aim to keep things as natural as possible. Observe the animals that visit or take up residence, but avoid unnecessary interference.
Be a Night-Time Ally:
- Turn The Lights Off: Reduce light pollution in your garden by turning off outdoor lights. Moths are strongly attracted to artificial light and can waste precious energy fluttering around them instead of foraging for food. Additionally, bright lights can disrupt the hunting patterns of bats and nocturnal birds, drawing them away from their natural habitats with the false promise of easy prey.
By embracing these wildlife-friendly practices in May, you'll be creating a welcoming and supportive environment for a myriad of fascinating creatures. Enjoy the increased biodiversity and the rewarding experience of nurturing nature right outside your door! Happy wildlife gardening!
