You may read this with some degree of scepticism, but at the very least, it’s true to say that many of us gain a great deal of pleasure interacting with the natural world. It also has many physical and mental health benefits and can often be done for free such as a simple walk in the woods.
Our relationship with the natural world is essential and one that needs to be promoted, especially from an early age; otherwise, future generations may consider these life-enhancing activities less important. In an increasingly urban and materialistic world, we need children and families to be able to interact with the natural(ish) world.
If you have a garden or some sort of outside space, you have the potential to invite the natural world in by creating a garden for wildlife. And despite what you may think it can be quite easy and often doesn’t involve you spending lots of money.
Wildlife gardening is also important, not just for us but also for the wildlife. The biodiversity of flora and fauna is declining massively, as is the abundance of the species that are still with us. We can all play our part, and perhaps doing something is better than doing nothing, and who knows what may come of it. Just looking at wildlife gardening alone, you only need to consider the amount of land classified as a garden to see the potential impact it could have.
Unsurprisingly the following were found to be good for garden biodiversity: Diverse plant structure with trees, shrubs, lawns and flower borders, ponds, a compost heap, hedges and walls.
Factors bad for wildlife were: Lots of hard landscaping, use of slug pellets and being too tidy
Based on these criteria, many gardens in the UK are already, to some degree, good wildlife gardens.
To further improve biodiversity, these characteristics can be used as a starting point for many other enhancements. These could include: Letting your lawn or part of it grow long, adding deadwood habitats such as a large woodpile or a dead hedge, using nest boxes that are known to work as well-designed solitary bee nests and using no pesticides at all.
We’ve been implementing changes to encourage wildlife over a number of years. We are lucky that we already have a great deal of wildlife within the garden and the surrounding estate.
We will be describing some of the wildlife within the garden and the work going on to conserve it as well as explaining other aspects of wildlife gardening and, of course, gardening in general.
