Making Your Garden A Welcome Space For Wildlife
/If you’ve been keeping an eye on the shifting environment around you home, then you might have noticed, like many other people, that there doesn’t seem to be much life in it.
Wildlife is being driven increasingly into smaller and smaller spaces, and we’re all at a loss for it. Wildlife diversity isn’t good just for the environment, it’s good for the soul. As such, making some room for it in your garden can be highly enriching, so how do you do it?
CREDIT: Pexels - pixabay.
Make It Hedgehog-Friendly
If you have hedgehogs in your area, there are plenty of great reasons to attract them to your garden. Aside from being cute as a button, they’re also great natural pest controllers. You can make your garden much more friendly for them by, for instance ,creating safe routes and gaps in fences, often called “hedgehog highways.” Building or installing a hedgehog house in a quiet corner of the garden can offer them some much needed shelter in the winter and on colder nights, too.
Attract Some Feathered Friends
Nothing adds sound, colour, and life to your mornings like birds tweeting outside your windows. Providing them with bird houses and nesting boxes can give them a safe place to roost in the colder months or during breeding season. These need to be high up, sheltered from the wind and predators alike, and you should install feeders stocked with bird seed mix to ensure that you’re able to sustain their healthy growth, as well. Any feeders ror bird baths you install should cleaned routinely to prevent disease.
Consider Installing A Pond
If you want to create a low maintenance garden oasis, then installing a water feature like an adequately sized pond can mean you have a lot less lawn to take care of. These do still require a little maintenance, but with the right care, you can play a big role in improving local biodiversity with water, shelter, and breedning grounds. This can attract frogs, newts, and all manner of insects. You can add native aquatic plants to maintain oxygen levels, but you want to avoid putting fish in, as they can eat a lot of the eggs and larvae.
Support Your Pollinators
We all need to do more for the bees, the butterflies, and other pollinators that play such an important role in supporting our ecosystem but are put in increasingly dire conditions. Native flowering species, such as bluebell,s hawthorn, heather, and more all help to support the lives and communities of these vital creatures. If you want to deter pests, avoid chemicals, but look up which companion plants work best for your garden. Even small container gardens and balcony planters can make a big difference, so use whatever space you’re able, even if it doesn’t seem like much.
If you have a garden, then you certainly have room to make for your less often-seen neighbours. Even one or two of the tips above can make a big difference in the health and safety of local wildlife.
This is a collaborative post.
