Regular readers will know that, as well as plants and fungi, I love wildlife. For me, a garden is not complete without its range of wild creatures, ranging from the birds and mammals that visit and sometimes stay for a while, down to the smallest invertebrates that live out their entire lives amongst the plants, in the leaf litter or in the soil.
Our back garden, June 2018
The natural world is under increasing threat from climate change, habitat destruction, pollution and too many humans using too many natural resources. More locally, road and house building, the paving of front gardens and the routine use of toxic substances (in agriculture, by some households and by most local authorities) are all causing harm.
Gardening with wildlife in mind makes our home environment much pleasanter and more interesting but also it helps to provide somewhere for other species to live and thrive.
If you want to read about wildlife gardening, the Wildlife Gardening Forum and the RSPB’s ‘Give Nature A Home In Your Garden’ websites are very good places to start.
Last summer I led a workshop on wildlife gardening and came up with some of my own general principles on wildlife gardening, a couple of which I have written about below. I hope you will find them useful.
What each of us can do in our own garden will depend on our own circumstances, such as the size of our garden, the amount of time we have available and where we live, but these are general principles which can be applied to most gardens.
It All Starts With Plants
When creating a garden it is customary (and sensible) to start with basic structures, such as fences around the perimeter and the position of paths, patios, sheds, washing lines, lawns, ponds and other hard landscaping features. However, from the perspective of wildlife, it is plants that form most of the fabric of a garden and provide shelter and food. For wildlife, it all starts with plants.
Flowers provide food in the form of nectar and pollen and, in return, insect visitors act as pollinators. Recent attention, such as Friends of the Earth’s The Bee Cause campaign has focussed on bees, which include bumblebees and many species of solitary bees as well as the more familiar and mostly domesticated Honeybee. However, other insects such as flies, beetles and wasps, all play their part.
Many kinds of garden wildlife feed on living plants. Leaves can support caterpillars of butterflies and moths, while roots of grasses in the lawn can support charismatic microfauna such as Cockchafer beetles. Some herbivores can be regarded as pests but in a well-balanced garden this only happens rarely (even with slugs and snails).
Cockchafer beetle
Plants are also the source of rotting and dead material, which is another food source. Dead leaves provide food for earthworms and invertebrates, fungi and bacteria help to break down dead plant matter on the compost heap.
The Wildlife Gardening Forum gives some basic principles for planting but the choice of what to plant is very wide.
Some plants are better for wildlife than others. Highly bred plants with double flowers and/or little or no pollen are of no use to bees and other pollinators, so don’t fill your garden with them. But not all bedding plants are bad – I find that hoverflies and some solitary bees like trailing Lobelia (Lobelia erinus) flowers.
Avoid invasive flowers which may become a nuisance to you, your neighbours or in the wider countryside. The Wildlife Gardening Forum gives some good advice on this. Beware of invasive pond plants such as New Zealand Pigmyweed. We inadvertently bought it from a garden centre and introduced it into the pond at our previous house and spent two summers getting rid of it.
I personally wouldn’t be without Viper’s Bugloss, Teasels and Oxeye Daisies and don’t find them to be a problem. Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica) grow in next door’s garden, so I don’t grow them at home because they’re rather invasive, but I’ve found room for a patch at the allotment, where they provide food for caterpillars of Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock butterflies.
I aim to have something in flower from early spring (February or March) through to autumn (October and November) and plants with a wide variety of flower shapes, to attract as many different insects as possible: hardy Geraniums, open-topped flowers like Wild Carrot and long-tubed flowers such as Catmint. (If you read other posts on this blog you’ll see what I like.) I grow a mix of native and non-native plants: both can be good for wildlife.
Sometimes I grow a plant just because I like its spectacular or interesting form, only to find that wildlife quite like it too. I planted Gunnera manicata because I like its spectacular leaves but I found our House Sparrows loved sitting on them and a visiting Fox cub sheltered in the shade the plant one spring. Tetrapanax papyrifer flowers late in the year (and often not at all). But when it does flower, its ivy-like blooms are attractive to Bombus terrestris bumblebees and Honeybees and in the summer insects bask on the leaves. Tree Tobacco flowers are pollinated by hummingbirds and sunbirds in some parts of the world but don’t attract insect pollinators in our garden. However the plant as a whole provides shelter for birds, including Blue Tits and Wrens, which hunt amongst the branches for caterpillars and spiders respectively.
As well as your budget and personal taste, the size and aspect of your garden will have a big influence on what you grow.
It is important to choose the right plant for the right place. Plants like Lavender, Catmint and Perennial Wallflowers like sun or semi-shade and prefer well drained soils. Other plants prefer shade or damp areas, while some will only grow on acid or alkaline soils. While many plants are quite adaptable, there is no point in fighting nature – a Rhododendron will never like chalky soil.
Be realistic with what you might attract to your garden, too. In the Isle of Wight, Ribwort Plantains may attract Glanville Fritillary butterflies, but they are not likely to do so in other parts of the British Isles where the butterfly doesn’t occur. But they may attract other wildlife and if you like growing them (which I do), why not?
Build Up The Layers
When creating a garden, complexity is good. Different animals like using different layers of planting and the more layers the better. Birds are more likely to visit the garden and nest if there are trees and shrubs. While hedges are great habitats, it is often more practical to grow climbers up fences and these can also soften edges of buildings too. I grow various climbers, including several varieties of Honeysuckle, Clematis, Chocolate Vine and Chinese Virginia Creeper. I’m a fan of Ivy, but we don’t grow it in the garden as it can be very rampant, though we plan to grow it as an “ivy bush“. When we moved here five and a half years ago, our garden had a lawn, gravel and slabs. We attract birds to the garden by feeding them, but it is only since trees and shrubs have matured that they stay around longer.
It’s worth looking at your garden from the point of view of a bird or insect. What do you need to do to attract different species?
For example:
Bees need food (pollen & nectar), a nest site in a sunny place (holes in walls, logs, hollow stems, snail shells, rough grassland, compost heaps, bare or sparsely vegetated ground bird nest boxes), building materials (mud for mason bees, leaves for leaf-cutter bees, hairy leaves for Wool Carder Bees), sunning places to bask, groom or mate, and sometimes water (such as a pond or bird bath that Honeybees in particular will use to drink and collect water to cool their nest).
Frogs need a pond in which to breed but also the cover of vegetation, where they will spend much of their adult life away from water. A log pile will provide cover for their invertebrate food.
A Blue Tit needs a nesting site (and readily uses nestboxes). Nuts and suet pellets will supplement the adult’s diet but it also needs a good supply of insects, particularly caterpillars, to feed its young. A Blackbird will nest in cover, such as a large shrub, hedge or climber and use a garden lawn as a hunting ground for earthworms. In autumn it will be attracted to berries on shrubs and trees, such as Rowan.
A Holly Blue butterfly will visit plants with nectar. (I’ve seen them feeding on exotics like Curry Plant and Canadian Goldenrod.) But they also need Holly and Ivy plants to lay eggs, where their caterpillars can feed.
Similarly, what does a Violet Ground Beetle, Brown Hawker dragonfly or a Hoverfly need?
Atlas Poppy (Papaver atlanticum) with three different hoverflies, including Episyrphus balteatus (top left) and Dasysyrphus albostriatus (bottom right).
No garden can supply everything, and may only be attractive for part of an animal’s lifecycle, but a garden with a number of layers, plus a lawn and a pond will provide food and shelter for a wide variety of wildlife.
We are building up a decent species list for our garden, including over 350 species of moths, 21 species of butterflies, 37 species of hoverflies, 60 species of bees, nearly 50 species of birds (including ones flying through our air space), Hedgehogs, Smooth Newts, Common Frogs and 7 species of woodlice. It is amazing what is living just yards away from us.
Update December 2019: My wife has started a blog, “Arthropedia“, describing the invertebrates we have found in our garden and further afield.
