Encouraging wildlife into the garden
Words: Julie Hollobone
There are plenty of ideas on show for attracting wildlife into the garden using plants or by providing habitats.
Attracting pollinators
‘Wild in the City’ is a garden to prove that urban spaces are important havens for wildlife, the planting is based on shades of purple from Buddleja ‘Black Knight’, Verbena bonariensis and Agastache ‘Black Adder’. Coupled with the swish of ornamental grasses, the area is a great place to relax while the plants provide pollen and nectar for visiting insects. Hollow tubes set in the woodlog wall and a bespoke insect hotel offer a safe habitat for winter.
Beetle benefits
The 'WWF's 50th Anniversary Garden - why we car about chalk streams' provides a haven for an abundance of wildlife, with gentle running water and meadow planting. A rotting tree stump is set amongst pretty wildflowers providing a place for beetles and other insects to thrive. A similar effect can be achieved at home with a pile of logs or woody prunings set up in a corner of the garden and left undisturbed.
Year round interest
Not all heathers flower in winter and in the ‘Heather in Harmony’ garden a range of summer-flowering heathers are planted with perennials. This group of plants provide a valuable source of food year round by incorporating winter and spring flowering heathers into the garden too. The garden is abuzz with a colony of buff–tailed bumblebees that are feasting on the flowers and visiting the bumblebee lodge, a home for up to 80 bumblebees.
Low effort long grass
A strip of grass at the base of the wall and below a tree is left long in the garden ‘My Life in the Cloud’. Not only does this save getting the mower into an awkward space but the flowering grasses and weeds provide plenty of pollen. Other wildlife can shelter unseen in the lush growth. You can leave the grass unmown or buy wildflower turf to lay for a more instant effect.
Berries for birds
Birds visit gardens for food of all kinds so when considering a suitable tree for the garden, choose a tree that not only flowers but gives a supply of berries later in the year such as Swedish whitebeam, Sorbus x intermedia planted in the ‘Cinema Paradiso’ garden. The orange berries start to turn in summer (after white flowers in spring), providing a tasty treat for birds later on.