Looking out for Wildlife
Robin visiting me while out in the garden. by Victoria Yore
It is all around us, we just don’t notice it. One of the best bits of nature is when a robin sings to you as you dig. Or when you go to look at your newly planted seedlings and an army of slugs have demolished them. But there is more we don’t pay attention to. Who are the good guys and who would we rather not invite to help themselves to our baby veg.
The obvious one is the slug. There are 44 different species of slug in the UK, but most of them don’t feed on your new plants. Some are actually beneficial within the garden. To protect your precious new seedlings, without harming the good slugs you can use a physical barrier, but if they are hungry enough, they will get through.
Adding a pond to the garden, which can be an old butchers sink, or an old tin bath (We had an old Ikea underbed storage box that collected rainwater, one day we went out to find a lot of frog spawn in the box. Unfortunately, it didn’t survive as there was no plant material in the box, but it goes to show it only takes a small amount of water to attract the right wildlife), will encourage so much wildlife. There will be small bugs for the birds to eat, frogs, maybe newts, dragon or damsel flies will visit. All of them will add to the diversity of wildlife and prevent your slugs running amok.
See if you can add a hedgehog highway under your fence panels for our endangered hedgehogs. They are fascinating to watch and will also control your slug numbers.
There are earwigs and woodlice to spot, and if you’re lucky a beetle or two. Ladybirds are most definitely to be encouraged and lacewings. Even pesky wasps are good in the garden. Just don’t eat meat around them. Obviously, there is our favourite the bee, but he is not the only pollinator to look out for. Next time you are in your garden see who you can spot going about their business.
Of course, there isn’t just animals, plants are important wildlife too. We generally call them weeds and hoick them up as soon as the show their tiny leaves. But they do play a part. Our pollinators need variety, each pollinator has a different method of collecting or using pollen, and as native creatures, they evolved with our native plants. If you can spare the space and bare the look, try to allow some of these ‘weeds’ aka wildflowers to grow.