There are so many fantastic benefits of encouraging more wildlife into your garden. More wild visitors will create a vibrant living atmosphere in your garden, as well as encourage better pollination of your plants. By following these few pieces of advice, you can welcome in a huge variety of creatures both great and small to share your garden with.
Befriend the Birds
Nesting boxes and feeders will encourage birds to breed and live in your garden. The best way to draw in a variety of birds is to try out a variation of different nuts and seeds, as different species favour different food. For a special treat and to really boost your bird population, try leaving out bacon rind and cheese!
If you are going to put up some new homes for them, place the nesting boxes in locations that are sheltered from the elements. Your choice of trees is also an important factor when it comes to introducing a variety of birds to your garden. Native species of trees such as crab apple, yew, elm or silver birch are the best for attracting birds and insects.
If you are wanting to attract slightly larger members of wildlife into your garden like hedgehogs and badgers, leave out offerings of nuts, seeds, fruit and root vegetables. Avoid bread and milk as these can actually cause digestive problems for the mammals.
Water Feature
If you have space in your garden, a pond is a fantastic way to increase and diversify your outside ecosystems. You can keep fish and frogs as well as invite beautiful insects such as dragonflies into your outside space. Water lilies and pond weed are the best plants to help oxygenate and develop your underwater home. To keep the pond looking like a natural element of your garden use informal, curved outlines for its shape.
You will also need to create variances in the depth of the pond to attract the widest variation of aquatic life, for example frogs need shallow areas for their life-cycle as a tadpole. If you are stuck on where to start looking for the equipment you need to build a pond have a look at Bradshaws Direct as they have a wide range of pond gear to suit any type of water feature.
Also, remember to collect the fallen leaves and decaying plants at the end of autumn to keep the pond healthy. Leave all collected debris at the side for a few days to allow animals to return to the pond before putting it on the compost heap.
Insect Hotels
They may get over looked but having a variety of insects encourages a larger variety of birds and also allows you to benefit from gorgeous butterflies and lady birds being regulars in your garden. You can create a feeder for insects such as lady birds by simply using some twine, a piece of bamboo and a few raisins.
Ladybugs are great guests in the gardens as they eat up to 50 pesky aphids like mites and greenfly a day! You will also want to encourage bees into the garden to help pollinate all of your flowers and plants. You can buy little ‘insect hotels’ from most garden centres which are created from a mixture of natural elements to create a cool little bug condo. Also, don’t overlook the importance of your choice of flowers.
Wild flowers such as Buddlea, foxgloves and bluebells, are a great way to encourage more bees and butterflies into your back garden.