for Beginners

Ferns look particularly good planted nearby and help to give more cover. Dead leaves and dead flower stalks are an under-rated resource for wildlife: many types of beneficial insects overwinter inside them, for instance tiny bees and ladybirds. Try to leave them in place until the weather has been consistently above 10 degrees C for at least a week, and if you must cut and tidy before that keep them in the garden, stacked out of sight in a corner. Leaves?

• Leave them where they are for the earthworms to drag underground where they will fertilise and aerate your soil. Don't want them on the lawn? Pop them on the compost heap, or stuff them loosely into jute leaf sacks and lay them singly onto the earth at the back of the border.

• Compost heaps, by the way, are also havens for wildlife. A good compost heap will provide food and breeding site for many invertebrates and the occasional amphibian or grass snake. Try not to turn it, but let them all be until it's all rotted down.

• Now for the grass and the flowers. The lawn can be a wonderful wildlife resource if you don't treat it with chemicals or shave it too closely. There are some very pretty wildflowers which tolerate mowing, for instance Self-Heal, Buttercups, Daisies, Clovers, Birds-foot Trefoil, Cinquefoil, Black Medick,

Violets. And if you can leave some tall, rough grass at the edges, you'll provide a home for the many butterflies and moths which breed in longer grass and the insects like crickets and grasshoppers which eat it. Voles also use long grass as safe 'highways' where they can remain hidden while they travel.

There is a huge range of pollinator-friendly garden flowers so take your pick – just avoid the hybrids (which often produce little or no nectar) and try to pick open, single flowers which offer easy access. Native wildflowers are especially valuable because they not only provide nectar but they are also food plants for insect larvae, some of which are surprisingly fussy about what they eat. I have three different types of Figwort weevil on my patch just because I have the Figwort, but there are both garden variety and native plants in my garden. One final word about invertebrates. These tiny 'creepy crawlies' are at the very basis of almost every food chain and we need to encourage them. They feed the birds and hedgehogs, and ultimately, they feed us. We have lost 70% of our insect biomass in the last few decades and this trend is continuing, but we let them die out at our peril. Wildlife gardening is important!

The lawn can be a wonderful wildlife resource if you don't treat it with chemicals or shave it too closely.