Create your own wildlife garden

How do you turn your garden into a wildlife haven? The finalists from our wildlife garden competition show how to encourage a host of creatures, while still creating a beautiful space

Our competition winners share ways to welcome more life into your plot

I built an attractive bug home and used left-over pond liner to keep it dry, then roofed it with moss Pam Woodall

WITH NATURAL HABITATS in decline, our gardens are an increasingly vital resource for wildlife, but how do you ensure yours is a beneficial as possible? This month we show you round the gardens of our three finalists in the wildlife garden competition category. The owners – Pam Woodall, Jeremy Young and Joanne Palmer – share some of their tips and advice on attracting wildlife into the garden, and we pick out some of their best features and ideas. We give ideas on how to recreate them in your own garden and how to make your patch of land, whatever its size, as beneficial to wildlife as possible. Next month, we’ll bring you our family garden finalists, and in April our small space winners.

A good-looking home for bugs

A bug hotel filled with natural materials from the garden can become an attractive feature and provide valuable shelter for ladybirds, solitary bees, beetles; even toads and hedgehogs. The residents you attract will depend on whether it is placed in the sun or shade. Pile up tiles, pine cones, bark, dead leaves and stones, and layer stacks of bamboo canes and hollow plants stems horizontally to stop water dripping inside. The cracks and crevices they create will become welcome nooks where wildlife can rest and breed.

Lush borders for food and shelter

A well-planted mixed border will provide shelter, cover and an abundance of food for the wildlife in your garden. Grow a mix of plants, including shrubs, small trees and climbers travelling up obelisks to provide a higher canopy, with perennials and groundcover plants for smaller insects, ground-feeding birds and mammals. Plant densely and there will be less need to water and weed. Also, fill gaps with spring bulbs and annuals to ensure there is permanent cover all year round.

Easy access for roaming

Man-made boundaries are meaningless to wild creatures, which often need to roam far and wide to seek out food and mates. Hedgehogs, for example, will cover about a mile every night. To provide passages between boundaries, you could remove a brick from the base of a wall, dig a small channel below a hedge or cut a rectangular, or circular, hole measuring 13cm x 13cm in the base of a fence. This will be big enough for hedgehogs to move around freely but too small for most pets to get through.

Dense planting offers cover for small beasties, looks attractive and needs less maintenance than bare soil Jeremy Young

Plant as many nectar-rich plants for pollinators as possible Joanne Palmer

Flowers rich in food for wildlife

Pollinator-friendly plants have a rich supply of nectar and pollen and attract beneficial garden insects, such as bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies. Look for plants with open flowers, like cosmos, and tubular flowers like foxgloves, that give easy access to the pollen, and choose singlerather than double-flowered varieties, which may not have nectar or pollen at all. Other favourites include lavender and Verbena bonariensis, which offer clusters of lots of little florets, each of which can be mined for nectar by pollinating insects.

Water for dips and drinking

A pond is one of the best ways to draw wildlife into the garden and spring is a good time to create one. It doesn’t matter how much room you have but choose a sunny spot and ensure hedgehogs and other wildlife have safe, easy access by creating a gradual slope at one end. Make the deep end 60cm deep, to offer protection from freezing winter weather for hibernating insects and amphibians. Do not add fish, which will eat frog and toad spawn, but choose a range of deep-water, floating, marginal and oxygenating plants to give cover and shelter.

Filled feeders

Gardens naturally supply seeds, berries and insects for birds and wildlife, but providing extra food will help supplement their diets through the lean times in winter and in hot, dry summers. Fill feeders with a range of sunflower hearts, niger seeds, suet and peanuts, as different food suits different birds, and hang them all year round in trees and bushes well away from potential predators. Badgers and voles love peanuts and seed mixes scattered on the ground, while shrews enjoy mealworms. Tinned dog food will help hedgehogs through the cold months of winter.

Mixed hedges for housing

A welcome alternative to the walls and fences that edge so many gardens, a mixed hedge offers roosting habitats, shelter and food for wildlife. Field maple, blackthorn and hazel all make a thick, bushy hedge and you can add hawthorn, holly and dog roses for their berries and hips. Don’t cut back hedges until late winter, when the berries have been eaten and to avoid disturbing nesting birds. You can also put cut branches at the bottom of your hedge or fence to provide extra habitats.

I have lots of different bird feeders around my garden Joanne Palmer

Make untidy areas look attractive by planting a rotting tree stump with ferns Pam Woodall

Nourishing nectar all year

It’s essential to choose plants that provide a continuous supply of nectar and pollen throughout the year. Autumn-flowering plants such as single dahlias and asters help insects build up their energy stores for the winter, while winter- and spring-flowering plants, such as sarcococca and crocus, will provide early foraging bees and other insects with their first meal. In a small garden grow spring bulbs, such as grape hyacinths, in hanging baskets, fill containers with dwarf dahlias and choose a scented winter-flowering shrub like Viburnum tinus as the feature plant by your front door.

Lodgings in logs and leaves

Piles of dead wood stuffed with leaves and pine cones will make a great home for wildlife and are a useful way to use up prunings and autumn leaf fall. Branches decay, providing food for beetles, newts, toads, woodlice and snails, while the cracks and flaking bark provide homes. Place piles in a shady spot, digging a hole so that some of the wood is buried and then stack the logs horizontally. Plant with ferns, and other shade-loving plants, to make it an attractive addition to your border.

Sweet meadow

Areas of tall grass are like jungles for wildlife – damp and sheltered at the base and laden with flowers, seeds and pollen for butterflies, birds and mammals at the top. Leave blocks of lawn to grow long from April onwards or cut meandering paths through larger areas and leave the grass to grow tall until early autumn, when you make your final cut. Dotting plugs of perennials and wildflowers, such as knapweed and ox-eye daisies, through the grass will provide extra nectar and pollen and maximise the meadow look.

Don’t rush to remove everything you didn’t plant – instead evaluate each ‘weed’ seedling or fungi Jeremy Young