2 minute read
Gardening for Wildlife
- thoughts for 2021
Gardening is a pastime which helps keep us fit and healthy. Wildlife gardening additionally lets us enjoy and connect to nature, bringing with it a host of benefits including a sense of wellbeing and improved mental resilience; a perfect antidote to the events of the last year.
Advertisement
You can encourage wildlife without compromising the way your garden looks; gardening for wildlife needn’t mean leaving an untidy mess. Small changes to your garden can bring major benefits for the creatures that call it home and bring in more wildlife for you to watch.
We have been gardening for wildlife since we moved here and hope we’ve achieved something that looks good and provides colour throughout most of the year whilst providing cover, protection, habitat and food sources for wildlife.
As spring approaches, it’s time to think about new projects and how best to manage the garden this year. Some suggestions are
• Plant some pollinator friendly plants - look for the Plants for Pollinators or Perfect for
Pollinators logo - and consider planting some berry shrubs as a winter food source.
• Put in some ground cover plants and allow some grass to grow long for shelter and insects to lay eggs. You could plug plant the grass with
wildflowers too. For wildflower seeds, you need to plant on bare soil, so they’re best going in a bed.
• Make a pile of dead wood, logs, stones for shelter.
• Provide water for wildlife to drink and bathe - in a bird bath or in a pond. You can even do a pond in a bucket or barrel. Make sure there is an escape route for creatures which fall in!
• Put up bird and bat boxes and build a bug hotel.
• Build a hedgehog home and provide gaps at the base of fences for them to travel between gardens. • Put in a water butt to conserve water, buy peatfree compost or better still make your own.
• Try and avoid weed killers, insecticides and nasty slug pellets
• Consider letting your front verge grow and see if wildflowers come up. Put up a Blue Heart!
Then just sit back and enjoy it!
In 2020 we loved sitting and watching the visiting wildlife, dragonflies and newts hatching from our pond and the insects busily pollinating our plants.
Diane Poole
