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August is possibly the best time of year in the garden, flowers should be putting on their best displays right now, and it's also the time when you can put your feet up and enjoy all the hard work you've put in over the year.
As summer fades, there are still a few wildlife gardening jobs you can do, including helping house martins before they leave for Africa.
Most of us are used to deadheading many plants to get a few extra flowers, but it's a good idea to leave some to form seed heads, providing a nutritious food source for birds during winter.
Here are the wildlife gardening jobs you can be doing throughout August.
Try to add one new plant to your garden that you don't already have. I try to add one new plant every month. Variety is the key for wildlife and the environment.
Deadheading spent flowers helps the plant to produce more flowers which helps pollinators. But if you deadhead every spent flower you don't allow the plant to create seeds which are an important food source for birds and mammals during autumn and winter. You could adopt a 50/50 balance, so you deadhead some and not others to help both bees and birds.
Some plants that have beneficial seed heads are teasels, lavender, verbena bonarienis, cornflowers, dog rose, viola, pansies and lots more. Experiment and find out which seed heads the wildlife loves.
House martins will still be producing a second, or third brood and will need to repair their nests. They can often be spotted visiting the edge of ponds along with blackbirds taking the wet mud at the edges.
If you don't have a pond or an area of wet mud, use a shallow container and place some mud in it and keep it watered.
Doing this won't bring in house martins if they are not already in your area, but if you have blackbirds and they are still building nests they will also use it.
Stop deadheading roses and allow them to form their seed heads, called hips, for birds and small mammals to enjoy in Autumn and Winter. Once all the leaves are gone from the bush, you'll have lovely red berries to add a splash of colour to the garden.
Blackbirds and thrushes may still be nesting so check your hedges for nests before you start cutting. If you find any, monitor to see if there is any activity or wait a few more weeks before cutting.
Continue to leave out dishes of water and meat-based dog or cat food (ideally chicken flavour) for hedgehogs. The young hoglets will need to fatten up before they go into hibernation in late Autumn.
Variety is key to supporting nature and wildlife. The best thing you can do to get started is add a tree (preferably fruiting), add water, have a pile of logs on the ground, don't use pesticides and don't prune or tidy the garden as often.
From there add as wide a variety of plants and flowers of differing heights, including ground covering plants.
Wild, cultivated, native, non-native are all good at the time of writing. But the best thing you can do for the environment is having the right plant in the right location, this means you don't have to change or improve your soil, or water lots throughout the year.
It's a good idea to add wildflowers to your garden as they are endangered, by adding them and collecting seeds and re-sowing the following year helps keep these flowers in our lives and hopefully following generations.
To improve your garden for wildlife doesn't mean you have to have a scruffy looking garden, so don't beat yourself up if you choose to have mainly short grass, or want the edges to look tidy.
Wildlife gardening jobs for January
Wildlife gardening jobs for February
Wildlife gardening jobs for March
Wildlife gardening jobs April
Wildlife gardening jobs May
Wildlife gardening jobs June
Wildlife gardening jobs July
Wildlife gardening jobs for November
Wildlife gardening jobs for December
How to attract birds to your garden
How to attract bees to your garden
Sowing and growing wildflowers
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