Wildlife Gardening
To ensure a good variety of wildlife visitors to your garden, you need to ensure a good supply of appropriate nectar and food plants, and also suitable habitats. The most suitable plants are listed below, plus the visitors they may attract. An abundance of wildflowers will make your garden the best wildlife restaurant in town! Providing a good native hedge will also provide suitable habitats for birds and small mammals. Also, do not tidy up the garden too much in winter - ladybirds and lacewings (major devourers of garden pests) like to overwinter in hollow flower stems, twigs, leaves and debris (as do many other insects). Hoverflies are also good aphid and pest eaters and particularly like yellow and gold-coloured plants. One important fact to remember in the wildlife garden is to NEVER use pesticides or herbicides - if you do you will kill off any wildlife you may have attracted.

Butterflies and Moths
Butterflies and moths are attracted by a wide variety of plants, both wildflowers, herbs and the more traditional cottage garden plants. It is also a good idea to have a small nettle patch to attract Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock butterflies, who like to lay their eggs on the undersides of the leaves. Cut the nettles back by half in mid-summer to encourage new shoots for the next brood of caterpillars.

Some Good Butterfly and Moth Plants
Butterfly Plants
Moth Plants



Bees
There are more than 250 species of native bee in Britain, including 19 species of bumblebee - 25% of which are now endangered. In the last four years or so, one species of bumblebee has been declared extinct and another has become extinct along the south coast. Today, only 6 out of 16 species are easily found and even these have declined in numbers. Bumblebees are beneficial to farmers because of their importance in pollination, although it is, ironically, the reduction in suitable farmland habitat by these farmers that has aided the decline of the bumblebee. The Bumblebee Working Group and English Nature are encouraging farmers to allow or provide White Deadnettle growth in hedgerows, establish Red Clover in field margins (very important bumblebee plant), and to leave field margins uncultivated for a few years in order to provide hibernation sites and forage areas. Gardeners can do their bit too by providing a small meadow area in their gardens and leaving an area of rough grass, preferably by a hedge, for mice or voles to nest in - what's this got to do with bees? Queen bumblebees like to nest in old mouse and vole nests. You can also buy bee nesting cylinders to attract Red Mason bees, who are excellent pollinators and non-aggressive. You can also buy special boxes for bumblebees to nest in. Interesting fact - a bumblebee can carry up to 60% of its body weight in pollen.

Some Good Bee Plants
Bee Plants

Birds
Birds are easy to cater for! Bird tables and feeders are easily found in shops and can be filled with seeds or peanuts to attract a variety of birds. Don't forget to sprinkle food on the ground for birds such as thrushes and dunnocks who like to feed at ground level. Peanuts will attract tits, greenfinches and woodpeckers, but ensure you buy them from reputable suppliers who will only sell peanuts free from Aflotoxin. Thrushes like rotting apples, and half a coconut hung up will be popular with nuthatches. Don't forget to keep the birdbath full of water for both feeding and bathing. With regard to bird-friendly plants, leave as many plants as possible to go to seed for they will provide seeds for the birds to eat. Again, wildflowers are your best choice here. Cooked potatoes, rice, bread and pasta are also popular. Remember to clean the bird table regularly and to keep feeding once you start - the birds that come to visit you will rely on you and come back every day.

What to Feed Garden Birds

Small Mammals
Please click here for information on attracting small mammals in to your garden.

Ponds
Ponds are important wildlife habitats.
for information on creating a wildlife pond, click here.

Wildflower	Nectar	Moth