GBDW - Wild About My Garden

In contrast to last month's pets theme, Gardening Gone Wild's design feature for this month is Wildlife in the Garden. Whilst I didn't deliberately design a 'wildlife garden' per se when we moved here, the needs of wildlife was one of the things I did keep in mind. After all, I wanted a garden of year-round interest myself and by thinking about that, it only takes a small step for it to mean a year-round interest for birds, insects and other beasties too - my favourite visitors are the bats in the summer. As a result I've chosen many flowers loved by insects, especially bees and butterflies - eschewing double formed varieties of plants such as Echinacea as these aren't so attractive to them. Berried shrubs and trees mean food in the winter for birds - we currently have 37 species as regular visitors or spotted nearby - not bad and the list has steadily increased year on year.

My main philosophy however, has been to ensure the garden is attractive to the smaller beasties such as invertebrates. As a freshwater biologist in my third career, I became a firm believer in looking after the populations lower down the food chain: do this and the rest will follow. This means becoming a lazy slow gardener, such as not being too hasty in clearing away all those leaves in the autumn, as they make a marvellous garden mulch. At this point some of you will be throwing your hands up in horror and exclaiming 'slug and snail haven!' and yes you're right, but I also have some very fat frogs in the garden ready to pop out to gobble them all up and I love hearing the regular sound of thrushes using the gravel path as an anvil to crack open snail shells.

Slow gardening also means leaving most of the faded summer blooms in situ over winter rather than cutting them down, thus leaving lots of seeds for the smaller birds to feed on and many insect larvae hunker down for winter in the stems too. This has an added bonus since we've had the problem of squirrels nesting in the loft (remember - one person's nice attractive wildlife can be another's garden pest), it means I still have lots to feed the birds which, unlike the birdfeeders I'd been putting out regularly, don't feed the squirrels as well. Thus the squirrels have stopped nesting in the loft this year and I've only needed to use supplementary bird feeders when it's been extremely cold. An extra bonus has been lots more birds foraging in the central part of the garden this winter instead of sticking to the edges.

Shelter is also important - I use the garden prunings which are too thick for shredding to create small log piles which are then tucked away towards the back of the borders - these are attractive to insects such as beetles: most species are beneficial to the garden. The rotting log piles, garden leaves and compost bins in my garden means the microscopic garden populations - the fungi and bacteria - have plenty to thrive on, which in turn helps other invertebrates such as my lovely worms - the best garden helpers of all. The birds are currently taking up residence in the trees in and surrounding the garden, plus the Clematis cirrhosa 'Balearica' (a wren's nest in the latter) in a big way at the moment. My quest for shelter for all kinds of wildlife also means there's a good excuse for friends to give simple, but very welcome home-made birthday gifts such as the pictured ladybird (aka ladybug) and bee haven my friends S & L gave me last week. All you need is a thick slice of tree branch (apple in this instance) drilled with lots of inch deep holes plus two T shaped brackets fixed to the back for attaching it to the fence and you can have one too!

Apart from squirrels and smaller mammals such as mice and voles, I don't have the more 'gardener challenging' wildlife visitors such as foxes, rabbits, deer or badgers. Whilst I love seeing these animals (and most of them have been seen close by), their presence in my garden would be a test for my love of nature. This is currently happening on the allotment, where foraging badgers have taken a liking to crops such as sweetcorn!

If you would like to know more about wildlife gardening, The Wildlife Trust has a very good Wild About Gardens section on its website which also reminds us that gardens are an extremely important haven for wildlife as they form a nationwide patchwork of green areas much larger than all the land set aside in the UK as nature reserves. The RSPB also has lots wildlife gardening information here, including a look at the issue of unwanted garden visitors.

Garden Bloggers' Design Workshop is hosted by Gardening Gone Wild.