Simple Swaps for a Wildlife-Friendly Garden
10 Steps to a Nature Garden is a wonderful self-paced online course from Patch of the Planet, on how to grow a wildlife-friendly garden. Ideal for anyone who loves nature, it includes over 4 hours of videos, and lots of exercises, plus you join the ‘Patch Pals’ online learning community. .
The course was created by ecological gardeners, who are experts on permaculture and fruit trees. They know how to grow a garden that will be loved not just by you, but visiting mammals to tiny insects!
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (some recommended flowers are not safe).
Tips for Wildlife-Friendly Gardens
- Ditch Chemicals and Fertilisers. Bin empty containers and take half-empty ones to the tip, In organic gardens, ladybirds can eat up aphids, birds and frogs will take care of slugs and snails.
- Let Part of Your Lawn Grow Wild. Cutting grass less often lets wildflowers pop up, to feed insects and pollinators. Leave a section of lawn un-mowed in spring and summer.
- Swap Exotic Plants for Native Species. Local plants support wildlife. They offer food and shelter for birds, insects and mammals.
- Add Log Piles and Stone Stacks. These create perfect hideouts, especially in sunny weather or for hibernation. Over time, these piles become homes for beetles, worms, frogs, and slow worms. Leaving fallen leaves and dead branches provide shelter, and enrich soil.
- Create Wildflower Patches or Meadows. These not only add colour, but attract bees, butterflies, and moths. Surprisingly, they need poor soil, so don’t add compost (encourages grass to compete).
- Hedges Instead of Fences. If possible, swap wooden fences for living hedges, these give safe nesting places and act as corridors for hedgehogs to roam at night between gardens.
- Wildlife-friendly ponds are loved by amphibians, birds and insects (ensure they have sloping sides, and avoid netting). Large shallow stones create safe landing spaces for bees and butterflies.
- Safe Havens for Garden Birds. Keep cats indoors at dusk/dawn (avoid wooden posts that claws can climb) and also avoid coloured/tin bird houses (these over-heat and attract predators). Turn off lights when not in use (and avoid facing indoor plants to gardens, to stop birds flying into windows).
Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything
Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything is the updated edition of a popular book by one of England’s most popular wildlife garden writers. Ideal for anyone who wishes to welcome more bees, birds, frogs and hedgehogs into their gardens, this is your go-to guide.
Teaming up with RHS and Wildlife Trusts, this book shares expert and up-to-date advice on nature-friendly gardening, and how to offer food and shelter.
The book contains handy charts for every size and style of garden, to create ideal habitats for the species you wish to welcome. There are facts on common garden species, plus tips on compost corners, wildflower meadows, pollinator plants and feeding birds naturally.
Keep fresh compost and fungi away from pets.
Whether you grow vegetables and flower-filled borders (or simply garden on a balcony or your doorstep), this guide is packed with simple and practical ideas to create a wildlife-friendly outdoor space!
Kate Bradbury is an award-winning writer who specialises in wildlife gardening, and also the wildlife editor for BBC Gardener’s World magazine. She also writes a regular column for a national newspaper. Her garden has featured on BBC Springwatch and Autumnatch. She lives in Sussex.
Renaturing (small ways to wild the world)
Renaturing is a lovely and unique book. We’ve all heard of rewilding, a good idea whether you own an estate or fund organisations to buy up land to provide natural habitats for birds and wildlife.
But this book focuses on a smaller scale, basically rewilding on your doorstep, starting in your garden! With a little bit of knowledge and care, you can rewild your outdoor space, to restore important habitats for all creatures, including insects and pollinators.
This is the story of a man who 20 years ago, moved from London to the countryside. Behind his farm labourer’s cottage with a small field, wit ha ‘for sale’ sign. Previously a place for family picnics and cricket matches, he knew that this 2-acre patch of land help great potential for nature to flourish.
So James decided to ‘rewild the field’. He built a wildlife-friendly pond, planted new meadows and created safe havens for wild birds and insects (and encouraged pollinators and wildlife, by encouraging flowers and plants). And soon what was once a grassy space, was again buzzing with life!
The author’s argument is that ‘rewilding’ can only really be done on a grand scale, if you own a country estate or on a government level. Renaturing is something smaller. It’s not mowing your lawn in May, planting a few pretty flowers for pollinators, not using chemicals to grow food and flowers. All of this is protecting nature, in a country that has now paved 50% of its gardens over.
James Canton is Director of Wild Writing at University of Essex. He also writes on oak trees, sacred spaces and rural landscapes in England.
Rewilding is when people buy up land and leave it, so nature comes back to life. This must be done usually by experts, for instance beavers can only be released by experts, to avoid harm to other creatures and vice versa. And you could not release wolves in the hills, as dogs and other wildlife would be harmed.
Planners and builders can hire accredited ecologists at CIEEM, to avoid harming wildlife. Rewilding Britain recommends that if you are concerned over a planning project, to talk to your local Wildlife Trust.
Reform UK if elected, plan to give over all rewilding land to industrial farming, which could send many native species extinct. And increase both floods and wildfires.
Saving Nature in Your Backyard (an expert guide)
How Can I Help? is a wonderful book of almost 500 answers on how to save nature from gardens to parks, from one of the USA’s top environmental and conservation writers. The author reveals the critical role that native plants play in attracting beneficial insects, and how this is such an important part of gardening worldwide.
From reducing urban concrete to leaving leaves and log piles for wildlife, join others to become an empowered and knowledgeable conservationist, from your own backyard!
Author Doug Tallamy is professor of Entomology (insects) and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has taught students about insects for 44 years.
He is founder of the website Homegrown National Park, which encourages everyone to plant native plants, to benefit local insects, birds and wildlife.
Doug Tallamy is the godfather of the native plant movement. The Washington Post
Planting with Nature (a guide to sustainable gardening)
Planting with Nature is a beautiful book on how we can support local wildlife and tackle the climate crisis, through gardening. The book includes tips on planting nectar-rich borders, native hedgerows, trees and wildflower meadows, plus rain gardens, green roofs and ponds.
Together with providing homes for birds, mammals, amphibians, bees and insects, you’ll find new ways to grow food, and make your own compost.
Birds and native wildlife have lost so much of their natural homes – hedgerows to wildflower meadows. By growing new natural replacements, this is the best help we can give to native wildlife, including endangered species like hedgehogs, dormice and bats.
Rewild Your Garden (habitats for birds, bees & butterflies)
Rewild Your Garden is an illustrated guide to bring wildlife back to your garden, often by just leaving things be. In this practical guide, horticulturalist Frances Tophill (a presenter on BBC 4’s Gardener’s World) shows how to plan and maintain a beautiful garden that will attract bees, birds and a throng of unsung garden heroes.
Whether you have a small balcony or a large open space, discover the joys of welcoming natural ecosystems back to your garden.
