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Your garden is the one place where you can do your bit for nature and know that every penny spent, and every minute you dedicate to helping wildlife and wild flowers has been well worth it once you start seeing the results.
Wildlife gardening isn't that hard. Especially if you currently have nothing in your garden. You can go completely wildlife friendly and only add native plants and wild flowers, or somewhere in the middle and add wildlife friendly cultivated and non native plants as well.
Even a highly cultivated garden is going to have an eco-system, before you start making your garden wildlife friendly, watch your garden for a year to see what beasties are actually visiting. You really don't want to remove a plant if it is providing a home for multiple species of wildlife. If a plant really isn't attracting any form of wildlife that you can see, then you could remove it and replace it with something more attractive to wildlife, or wait until it dies off naturally then replace it.
If you only want to do one thing, like not mowing your lawn as often, just putting water out for birds and bees, or planting wild flowers, you are doing something so pat yourself on the back. For those of you who want to create a mind blowing wildlife habitat just go for it, and share photos of what you have achieved to help encourage others to do the same - but ultimately do what makes you happy and what you can manage. Just remember not to put yourself under pressure, or compare what you are doing to others, just enjoy yourself and engage with the wildlife that you are fortunate enough to have.
It doesn't matter what sized garden you have either. The most important thing is to make sure wildlife can access it and have a reason to stay for a while.
Here are some things you can do to go wild in your garden:
Whether you choose to dig a hole and lay a pond membrane, or buy a ready moulded pond, or simply use an old tub, adding a pond attracts all sorts of wildlife from frogs, toads and newts to insects like dragonflies and birds.
In this instance it probably pays to put in native plants, as you are providing plants that are found naturally in British streams, ponds and waterways. These will be the plants our wildlife has evolved to eat, hide under and lay their eggs on. Plus if they were to end up in our waterways, they are less likely to cause harm.
Caterpillars are baby butterflies and moths. Caterpillars enjoy nothing more than munching on leaves. Many species will have specific requirements - small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock have a preference for nettle leaves, while moth caterpillars tend to like native trees and shrubs.
Once you provide a home for caterpillars, you are also providing a banquet for birds and hedgehogs.
Here are some more articles about caterpillars:
Plants To Add To Your Garden For Caterpillars
You can look forward to having around 10 species of butterfly visiting your garden. Butterflies feed on nectar, and can be seen feeding on flat daisy like blooms as well as plants with long, tubular flowers. The more of these you can grow in your garden the better. Examples of tubular flowers are foxgloves and penstemons. Other types of plants loved by butterflies are, buddleia (buddleja) the butterfly bush, salvias and daisies.
The Best Shrubs For Butterflies
Birds need dense shrubs, hedges, and trees to roost, nest and hide in. Plus natural sources of food like caterpillars, spiders, bugs, sunflowers, wild flowers and fruit. Unfortunately the squirrels visiting my garden make off with the sunflower heads before the seeds are ripe enough for the birds.
The Secret To Getting Birds Into Your Garden
In winter, birds need a bit of extra help when their food sources are limited. You could always make fat balls for them. Either buy from a reputable retailer, such as RSPB, or buy some unsalted fat/lard from the supermarket and add sunflower hearts, dried fruits and peanuts. Mix it up and put them into old yogurt pots that you can hang in the garden.
Gardeners used to feed birds only in the winter, but it has become common practice to fed them all year round. I don't know if that is clever marketing to get people to buy more seeds, or because the birds really need it. New research is currently being undertaken to find out the answer to whether we should be feeding them all year around.
I feed birds all year, and I get some species of birds in the garden all the time, and others that come and go at different times of the year. At the time of writing I'm enjoying watching Chiffchaffs which will be here for a few weeks before they continue on their way to the Mediterranean and West Africa. They will be replaced by Blackcaps.
Birds use water to drink and to bathe in. It helps them to fluff up their feathers to insulate themselves against the cold. I also noticed birds just sitting in water during the really hot days during 2022 when we hit 40.3c. They also washed far more often when the weather was really hot.
You can buy a bird bath or use plant trays. Different sized birds like different sized pots, I've noticed robins, blackbirds and starlings like a deep bath, whereas great and blue tits like a shallow bath. Dunnocks really love a flat dish with a couple of millimetres of water.
Grow different types of berry bushes, such as blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. Blackbirds often strip these bushes before we manage to harvest any, they especially love the blueberries.
You don't need a large garden to grow pollen rich flowers for bees. Many flowers can be grown in containers. There are also plenty of plants that like dry hot weather that flower and produce enough pollen for bees - see our American Prairie mix.
To make things simple, you can always start off in a garden centre. Stand in the middle of the flowers and see where the bees are hanging out, make sure they are staying on the plant and not just window shopping. If the bee likes the plant then take that plant home with you. The care label should give you all the information you need to find out if the plant is suited to your garden, otherwise ask someone at the garden centre for further advice.
When bees first appear in spring, they are hungry and urgently need nectar. You can help them by planting early flowering plants in pots to help boost their energy levels before they start searching for a nesting site.
Here are some articles about flowers that bumblebees and honeybees like in particular:
The Best Flowers For Bumblebees
The Best Flowers For Honeybees
Dead wood is just as important as living wood. It provides shelter for amphibians and reptiles. They can provide a habitat for some types of solitary bee if they are in a sunny spot. If you partially bury your logs in a shady spot they will provide nesting habitats for some types of beetles. Spiders also love them, and birds will hunt for the insects. Fungus can also grow on the dead wood which really shows you are getting a very good eco system going.
You can help hedgehogs by taking out some wood from your gate, fence or creating an opening in a wall at ground level so they can move from garden to garden.
They like water, long grass, compost heaps and piles of leaves. They will make a quick meal of slugs and snails so don't use slug and snail killing pellets. They will usually eat most things you leave around in the garden for other animals, like fruit, seeds, nuts, mealworms, cat food etc.
Unless you spend some time in your garden after dark, you may be un-aware that you have bats. Bats eat insects such as mosquitoes and midges, these insects like garden ponds and wildflower meadows. If you add a bat box to your garden you may just be lucky enough to get them roosting in it.
Bare fences and walls offer quite a limited use for wildlife. Use climbers to cover bare spaces giving birds somewhere to nest and hide, bees will use them to hide in during rain and for butterflies for hibernation.
Lots of us enjoy having hanging baskets, but often they are full of flowers that do not produce much pollen. Use different flowers than the norm, find pollen rich or wildflowers and stand out from your neighbours.
Hoverflies are also pollinators and play a vital role in keeping crops and other plant species reproducing. They like late flowering asters, rudbeckia, helenium, knapweed, ivy, fennel, dandelions, achillea and buttercups.
You don't need a huge area to do this, and if you are unsure of what will work buy a mixed seed pack or buy multiple packs of seeds to find out what will work in your soil. But it is best to remove the grass as the grass will out compete any plant you try to grow. You can either throw the seeds down and water them, or buy plug plants which will be a little bit more expensive. For plug plants, simple mow your lawn, remove all grass clippings, then plant the plugs at random intervals, you can of course also plant plug plants into bare soil.
You can create plug plants yourself, buy some wildflower seeds and sow them in a small pot. Once you have a strong and healthy plant, put it into the ground.
It's important to add wildflowers to your garden, as these are also becoming endangered because humans have spent too much time tidying up and cutting back natural habitats.
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