A fabulous little shield bug nymph that also happens to dine on aphids.
Down here in deepest rural Devon I’m lucky enough to garden on a piece of land that has never been cultivated or intensively worked before, let alone been bombarded with pesticides.
As a result the variety and sheer numbers of wild animals that live in the garden is a constant source of amazement to me, and the diversity of insect life in particular is especially remarkable, with new jewelled beetle, bee and dragonfly species seeming to appear each year.
But no matter where your garden is located, be it a city rooftop, a suburban terrace or a wild moor, the benefits of attracting and keeping wildlife in the garden are the same. If we grow plants and maintain gardens in order to have somewhere interesting and attractive to spend time, then when those same gardens are teeming with wildlife you’ve adding a whole other dimension of interest. It’s the difference between viewing a still life and 3D cinemascope.
Toad - natural slug killer par exellance.
But wildlife in the garden is not just ornamental. All gardens are, to one extent or another a war zone, with an array of slugs, caterpillars, weevils and other little pests just waiting till your back is turned before planning their next raid on your leafy lovelies.
By encouraging wildlife – be they birds, predatory insects or mammals – you are also recruiting foot soldiers to do your pest control work for you. Definitely what you’d call a win/win scenario.
Even more importantly though, from Honey Bees to House Sparrows to Small Tortoiseshells, our native wildlife continues to decline through habitat loss and by creating the right mini-environments and feeding points in your garden you can help to tip the balance back in their favour.
Southern Hawker - one of the first dragonflies to arrive at new urban ponds.
There’s no doubt that the single most important thing you can do for wildlife in any garden is to build a pond. Once established ponds become the centre of the garden as far as wildlife is concerned and you’ll see a big increase in the variety of animals visiting.
Toads and frogs will quickly set up base in even very small bodies of water and will repay you the favour by wolfing down large numbers of slugs and snails. Other natural slug killers that will likely visit a pond are hedgehogs together with an array of birds that will drink and bathe in shallow pond margins.
Along with being beautiful and fascinating to watch in action dragonflies and damselflies are also voracious predators of smaller insects. These miniature winged marvels disperse over huge distances and are adept at locating water bodies, with a few species specialising in colonising new ponds. The larger and deeper the pond the more species it will attract, but even the tiniest are wildlife magnets.
Throughout the rest of the garden animals will be looking for habitats to shelter and breed in, as well as food sources for themselves and their offspring. Trees can house huge communities of wildlife, and natives like Oak, Hazel, Willow and Hawthorn in particular are invaluable to birds, mammals and insects alike. Fruit trees – especially apple – are also much loved by blackbirds and many others through autumn.
Flowering Ivy - a vital food source in late autumn.
Shrubs too are essential shelter habitats for wildlife, and a mixture of deciduous and evergreen plantings will encourage smaller birds including wrens and dunnocks, as well as providing winter accommodation for hedgehogs.
Flowering climbers and shrubs are also vital food sources for pollen and nectar-eating insects, especially butterflies, beetles and bees.
Flowering very late in the season, Ivy can be positively smothered with feeding insects like hoverflies come November and those same hoverflies will have spent their summers hoovering up aphids from the rest of your garden.
Of course all flowering plants, down to the smallest clovers, are also highly beneficial to feeding insects, and these will in turn attract larger predatory insects and birds.
Silver-Washed Fritillary feeding on bramble flowers.
A good diversity of flowering plants, with selections that flower throughout the year is the best wildlife recipe, whilst seed heads should, wherever possible, be left to provide essential winter food for birds and shelter for over-wintering insects.
Native species like foxgloves and primroses are particularly beneficial. If you can try to leave some nettles, thistles, brambles or vetch in a hidden and unused corner of the garden and watch the butterfly population boom.
Small log heaps will support a huge array of insect life, most of which, like slug-eating ground beetles, are highly beneficial whilst the warmth of compost heaps may, if you’re lucky attract slow-worms, wonderful legless lizards that will dispatch large numbers of slugs and snails. Nestboxes, not just for birds, but also for bees and ladybirds, are now readily available or easily built, and of course every garden should have at least one bird feeding station.
Blue tit - a feathered pest-control unit.
Providing peanuts and sunflower seeds through winter will literally mean the difference between life and death for the likes of Blue & Great tits, which are unable to forage effectively in frozen conditions.
Those same birds will then spend the following season searching your garden for caterpillars to feed their young.
One final thought, don’t be too tidy. Leaving things a little ragged, a little more natural will help to create a rich ecosystem of wildlife in your garden.
Tags: Garden, Gardening, Nest Box, Pest Control, Pests, Plants, Slug Killer, Slugs
[...] As well as providing autumn interest to us those berries are certainly a bird magnet and a Hawthorn is a near-essential element of any wildlife garden. [...]