Wildlife Gardening
Love your creepy-crawlies
We have such a love-hate relationship with insects in our gardens.
People spend lots of money on chemical insecticides, but the reality is
that insects are absolutely vital to your garden. They pollinate your
plants, provide food for birds and themselves eat other insects. They
are part of the natural balance - plant-eating aphids and blackfly are
a favourite snack for ladybirds for instance. And the first step to making
friends with your garden insects is to get to know more about them.
Bees - Sadly bees are under threat from a widespread
loss of native wildflowers. All bees need a continuous supply of pollen
and nectar, so the wildlife gardener can help by growing lots of plants
that flower at different times, so the garden has sources of pollen for
as long a period as possible.
Bumblebees need early spring flowers such as aubretia,
berberis, bluebells, dandelions, flowering currents, wallflowers, and
white deadnettle. During summer they will go for bramble flowers, buddleia,
comfrey, cotoneaster, fuschia, globe artichokes, cardoons, golden rod,
jasmine, knapweed, lavender, mallow, Michaelmas daisy, raspberry, rhododendron,
thistle, thyme and vetch.
Bees that don’t make honey - bumble bees, leaf cutter bees, miner
bees and solitary bees - are probably more valuable to wildlife gardeners
than honey bees, as they fly in colder conditions and so pollinate plants
earlier in the year. It would not be an exaggeration to say if bees disappear
whole families of plants might also disappear.
Hoverflies - Want to get rid of aphids? Attract hoverflies to your
garden. The larvae of this insect eat an astonishing amount of aphids,
even more per minute than ladybird larvae. The fastest way to bring them
in to your garden is to plant Limnanthes douglasii (also known as poached
eggplant). Another way is to plant yellow flowers, which adult hoverflies
home in on, particularly broom, knapweed and yarrow. Buckwheat and convolvulus
are also good as sources of late season nectar. Most of the flowers that
attract bees also benefit hoverflies.
Ladybirds and lacewings - The adults of these insects
will take nectar and pollen from the same plants as hoverflies, but to
have a healthy population of ‘good’ insects like these in
your garden you also need a good supply of ‘bad’ insects for
them to eat (this is the natural balance all good wildlife gardens aim
for). So, grow plants like nettles, honeysuckle and lupins which attract
aphids and you’ll also get a good number of ladybirds and lacewings
to feast upon them.
Wasps - Is there anything good about wasps? Yes.
Despite their poor reputation, wasps are great friends to the wildlife
gardener particularly in the spring and summer when they eat pest insects
in your vegetable garden. Dead and rotting wood provides them with the
material to make their extraordinary ‘paper’ nests, and they
enjoy all the same nectar-producing plants as the hoverfly.
Spiders - These are the best of wildlife gardening
friends, catching flying insect pests in their webs. They like nooks and
crannies, so try hanging out thin stands of string in undercover spots
for them to secure their webs to. You can also place cut down yoghurt
pots near by to provide a source of water.
Beetles - Most beetles are friendly to the wildlife
gardener, often pollinating in cold and wet weather when other insects
aren’t active. Ground beetles like very thick plant cover which
prevents bigger predators from finding them. They also like plants with
spaces between leaves to hide, log piles and deadwood, which provides
cosy conditions for hibernating beetles.Worms - If you want to hear songbirds
in your garden you have to have worms. As well as being a favourite bird
meal, worms are also the best soil texturisers and fertilizers ever. They
excrete something like thirty tons of ‘worm casts’ per acre
per year, and their burrows help aerate and drain the soil, as well as
providing easy growth channels for plant roots.
Encourage your worms by keeping the soil moist and covered with a compost
or mulch.
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dead wood |
| West
Garden Survey Help us find out about the region's wildlife by watching your garden over the summer months. We've teamed up with the Western Daily Press to organise this survey see their website for details |
| Articles in this series |
| Making
room for wildlife A year in the wildlife garden |
| The
wildflower garden Go chemical free! |
| The
water garden Help us eradicate pond pests |
| The
night garden Midsummer magic |
| Weeds
of mass domination American connections |
| Love
your creepy-crawlies Home sweet home |
| Childs
play Treasure trove |
| Eternal
sunshine of the wildlife garden Devils darning needles |
| The
bare necessity For peats sake |
As well as planting pollen-rich plants to attract insects, there are other
ways you can make your garden more hospitable to friendly creepy-crawlies.
All wildlife need specific habitats for homes, but they’re very
adaptable and will quite happily make a home in a man-made habitat if
conditions are right.
Dead wood pile
Dead wood is an excellent refuge and source of food for insect larvae,
but today fallen wood is often cleared or tidied away too quickly to provide
this shelter. This is having a direct impact on insects such as beetles,
solitary bees and hoverflies. So why not create a dead wood pile in a
quiet corner of your own garden? It will soon become home to a whole host
of wild creatures. Stack different sized logs (not too small) in a shady
part of your garden, avoid using treated wood, and watch the wildlife
move in. If you’re lucky, hibernating hedgehogs and slow worms will
also find a home here. Don’t forget, if you lift up the logs to
take a look, do put them back!
Bundles for bees
Solitary bees and wasps are harmless and great for pest control, but they
need shelter. The easiest way to accommodate them is to drill holes in
pruned branches and logs, as deeply as possible, with 4mm, 6mm and 8mm
bits. Stand these against a sunny south-facing wall anytime from April
to July. The smallest holes will attract mainly solitary wasps, while
the mid-sized ones should be popular with mason bees. The larger holes
will attract leaf-cutter bees. You can also hang bundles of various-sized
bamboo sticks (with one end stoppered) under a hedge, or make a 'stick
case’ by bundling together hollow canes and straws of all different
sizes. This will give shelter to solitary wasps, bees and spiders. Next
spring why not bury clay pots in banks and shrub beds and add some old
straw or sawdust bedding to create a nice nest for queen bees.
