BRILL CLIMATE ACTION GROUP : COMMITTED TO CHANGE
creating a biodiverse garden
A biodiverse garden is one that is overflowing with life. It has an abundance of different plant species and attracts many forms of wildlife. Water is a great magnet for wildlife and is the single easiest way to add wildlife value to a garden. Installing a pond, however tiny - a large pot, an inverted dustbin lid, a bird bath or even just a container of water - in your garden will help many creatures thrive, from birds and dragonflies to frogs and newts. We will explore this topic further in the coming months and provide you with easy ways of creating water features that will encourage wildlife into your garden. Until then, try one or more of this month’s Just One Thing ideas to make your garden more bio-diverse.
Making a hedgehog highway (photo from Hedgehog Street website)
Committed to Change: Try Just One Thing
1.Give up pesticides! They are so bad for bees! If your lawn is treated by a lawn care company, ask for them to only use fertiliser. Weed killers and pesticides disrupt the navigation sensors in bees’ brains and this stops them passing on where to find food to the rest of the hive.
2. Grow fragrant rather than showy flowers. Most butterflies, moths and some insects will find their food plants by smell, not sight, and will travel from garden to garden to locate the correct species.
3. Start a compost heap. Composting is a great way of recycling nutrients and returning these nutrients to your garden soil. Use green garden waste, raw (not cooked) food waste and some brown garden matter (leaves, sawdust from animal bedding, or ripped up cardboard). Compost heaps and mounds of grass clippings also provide an ideal habitat for slow worms.
4. Make a log pile in a shady corner of your garden (somewhere where the wood won’t dry out). Rotting wood is the perfect habitat for many insects and fungi. Try burying a log vertically and leaving it to rot. With a bit of luck, you may create the perfect home for a stag beetle.
5. Leave an area of the lawn to grow long. Try No Mow May! Long grass is not only food for some butterfly caterpillars but cover for insects and shelter for small mammals such as wood mice, voles and shrews.
6. Make a Hedgehog Highway. A small CD-sized hole in your fence will allow hedgehogs to travel between gardens. Hedgehogs travel long distances every night on their hunt for food so joining your garden with your neighbours will encourage hedgehogs to visit yours. Best of all, hedgehogs are great for gobbling up slugs.
7. Lay a piece of corrugated iron down flat somewhere shady to provide cover for animals such as newts, toads, lizards and snakes.
8. Add bird feeders and nest boxes. Try and provide a range of bird food and feeding stations to encourage different species of birds. Don’t forget that birds like blackbirds, sparrows and thrushes prefer a bird table rather than a feeder.
Jayne Gibson-Harris for BCAG, March 2022