Garden Wildlife

Today’s gardens are our most important nature reserves. In some areas, they are undoubtedly more important for wildlife than the surrounding ‘countryside’, with its pesticide-drenched monocultures. This is true even where the gardener does nothing in particular to encourage visitors: the wide range of plants grown in a typical garden is itself enough to attract lots of insects, and the insects bring in the birds. By being more laid-back and a little less tidy, you can have a garden buzzing with wildlife and filled with tasty crops and fine flowers. Your guests will actually do much of the pest control for you – free of charge!

Wildlife gardens aim to increase the number of native species visiting and residing in a garden without any loss of productivity.

The flower border, a major feature of most gardens, contains a wide range of plants that flower at different times and attract insects and other small creatures for much of the year. Caterpillars chew the leaves, bugs suck the sap, bees and butterflies feast on the nectar, and many other insects attack the fruits and seeds. Hidden from view, the roots provide sustenance for wireworms, leatherjackets, slugs and millipedes. Earthworms derive most of their nourishment from the decaying plant matter in the soil. All these creatures provide food for birds and small mammals, so even a simple flower border is a mixture of several micro-habitats.

Even the smallest of backyards in an urban area can still be a riot of colour, packed with flowers that act as filling stations for butterflies and many other insects.

A single climbing rose can feed a huge number of insects, which, in turn, can provide food for numerous spiders and birds. The birds may also nest there, well protected from predators by the rose’s prickly stems.

Tiny mosses, seen here covered with pear-shaped spore capsules, erupt from the smallest cracks in walls and paths.

The vegetable plot has a similar diversity to that of the flower border, although it does not have much in the way of nectar sources and, being subject to more disturbance as crops are planted and harvested, it tends to support a smaller variety of animal life.

These lend welcome shade and shelter to other parts of the garden and are micro-habitats in their own right, providing homes and hunting grounds for insects, spiders, birds and many other creatures.

These provide yet more living space for both flora and fauna, a fact that is easily appreciated when you look at the number of spider webs that adorn the fences in the autumn. Even ordinary concrete paths can support wildlife – tiny mosses wedge themselves into cracks in the concrete, while ants often nest underneath the paths and benefit from the heat absorbed by the concrete on sunny days. You might not even know that they are there until they fly off on their marriage flights in the summer.

A pond is one of the richest of all wildlife habitats, and garden ponds, happily, are now becoming increasingly popular. Pond-watching can be great fun, and the garden pond can literally be a life-saver for frogs, toads and dragonflies, all of which are now suffering from the disappearance of so many farm ponds and other watery sites in the countryside.