Gardening for wildlife.
As a gardener, I focus on working in harmony with our natural world. My interest in ecology and extreme concern over the degradation of our living world heavily influence my gardening. I believe that all gardens can and should be havens for wildlife. This doesn’t necessarily mean leaving our gardens to become overgrown - there are numerous ways in which we can create and nurture living spaces that are both useful, beautiful and accessible.
Whether it be introducing a wildlife pond, hedge, meadow, deadwood or other type of habitat, I am keen to work with you to advise and assist on how to encourage a diverse abundance of life to thrive in your garden.
Wildlife ponds.
Wildlife ponds can add so much value to a garden.
They can attract a huge wealth of life to a garden, which make them ever more beautiful. There is something very calming about watching a pond. The longer you observe, the more you notice. Perhaps the face of a frog will suddenly emerge through the surface of the water or perhaps you will see stringy toad spawn draped across underwater vegetation where yesterday there was none. One of the most astoundingly quick changes can be the attraction of an abundance of winged life, especially insects. Amphibians such as frogs, toads and newts will often find their way to a newly created pond. If you are lucky you may even attract grass snakes and even hedgehogs to your watering hole.
Ponds also act as a reservoir and if created in the right spot in your garden they can naturally capture rain water and hold it, especially during heavy and prolonged downpours the likes of which we are more likely to see as the weather continues to become more unpredictable and extreme. If everyone who had the space were to add a pond to their garden, we’d not only create a broad and potentially complex network of breeding sites for numerous species but we would have a significant capacity to divert excess water from our over-burdened drainage systems.
If you’d like to create a pond in your back garden or need help managing an existing pond do get in touch and we can work out how best I will be able to assist you.*
*Please note that I am unable to create ponds that require the use of concrete or other hardscaping materials. My experience of creating ponds is through the use of flexible liners such as butyl rubber.
Hedges.
Hedges can be a great way to add trees and shrubs to your garden on a manageable scale for a smaller space. By growing hedges along boundaries such as fences, we can make good use of space and provide great shrubby habitat for small animals to live in and sheltered nesting sites for birds. Many hedge species flower early in the year and a mixed hedge can continue flowering through to spring and into the summer. They can also be an opportunity to introduce a range of fruiting species into your garden, both for yourself and the other residents in your garden to enjoy.
I am able to advise and assist with the planting and maintenance of hedges, with a particular interest in those that provide sustenance or other useable material for both people and wildlife.
Meadows.
Wildflower meadows can be valuable additions to a garden. Leaving a mixture of grasses and wildflowers to grow tall can add an abundant and varied source of food to pollinating insects, whilst creating cover so that other creatures can migrate around the space. They can be used in small spaces and can be useful to connect one section of a garden with another. They add height and interest to a large lawn area, into which can be mown paths for access and to create spaces to be within the garden. Even leaving the verges of a lawn area uncut can provide crucial space for wildlife, especially that which is trying to escape the blades of the mower!
If you would like help with establishing and managing areas of wildflower meadow in your garden whether big or small, get in touch and we can discuss options!
Deadwood.
We often fixate on the obviously living things in our garden and our practices regularly involve removing deadwood from plants or even gardens altogether. This is, however, a rather unfortunate habit and one that ignores the fact that decay is integral to many forms of life. Dead and rotting wood provides sustenance to numerous fungal species throughout the duration of its decomposition and the networks of fungal hyphae that this supports can have wondrous effects for our plants.
Deadwood also supports many animal species. By providing dark, damp spaces (ie the underneath of a fallen log) for organisms that thrive in these kinds of habitats such as centipedes, beetles, frogs and toads we can massively boost biodiversity, which in turn helps to create a balanced garden ecosystem where the aforementioned help to keep the proliferation of pests such as slugs and snails under control.
It is most beneficial to have deadwood in a range of sizes and shapes throughout the garden landscape. Obviously this depends what we have access to. One easy way to bring deadwood into the garden, however, is to incorporate the ‘chop and drop’ method into our weeding routine.
Other approaches.
There are numerous approaches to attracting wildlife to your garden and it can be important to think about where your garden sits in relation to other gardens and green spaces. If your garden is surrounded by other gardens that are completely paved for example and your fences are bottomed by impenetrable concrete, a frog is going to have a hard time finding its way into your pond. If your garden is paved, it might be too much of an undertaking to dig a pond and a meadow is probably out of the question. Whatever the context of your garden, there is always something we can do to help make it a bit more diverse, however small. A pond doesn’t have to be big, nor set into the ground. It could simply be an upcycled container that holds water and is made accessible to life that might happen upon it. There are numerous plants that could fit into a planter and supply food and shelter for creatures without having to find soil and space to plant a hedge. Deadwood can fit into most gardens, but of course you first have to find some.*
Part of what I am able to offer are consultations on how to make your garden more supportive of our local wildlife, including ways in which we can link our gardens up to allow life to once again be able to freely move across our busy, often disconnected city landscape.
*Please don’t take deadwood from spaces where it is already providing good habitat! I absolutely do not advocate taking deadwood from the likes of Epping Forest, the marshes or any of our parks and greenspaces which are as much if not more of a vital habitat as your back garden. The best places to acquire some are from neighbours who might be getting some tree work done and who are happy to share or alternatively from a tree surgeon whom you may happen upon in the street.
