Wild ways: how readers have been helping wildlife in their gardens
Inspired by the story of the hedgehog highways in an English village and impressed by the contributions to our urban wildlife gallery, we asked Guardian readers to tell us what they have been doing to help wildlife in their gardens in 2020. Gardens are important habitats for small mammals, songbirds and insects and gardening in a wildlife-friendly way can make a massive difference in counteracting biodiversity loss. As always, the response was amazing, with readers from the UK, Australia, the US and Mexico sharing their innovations. Here are the best of them.
‘It’s been astonishing’
Helped by lovely friends and neighbours I dug a pond about seven years ago, which has been a joy. This year we watched a female southern hawker dragonfly hatching, which was astonishing. I left my lawn long this year and we had a ground nest of common carder bees under a tree, revealed when we finally cut the grass in August. You could clearly see the queen. There have been lots of other bees, including bumble and honey, as well as other dragonflies, damselflies, frogs and newts. I’ve never had the time to observe the wildlife so close up before and it’s been astonishing.
Stephanie Chadwick, Bristol
‘It’s fantastic to watch the red squirrels and the interactions between them’
I feed badgers nuts every night. The mum and cub are great at sharing the nuts. The male tends to come in a bit later when they are all gone, but he has a good snuffle around to see if any have been missed. I have a feeding station outside the kitchen window and it’s fantastic to watch the red squirrels and the interactions between them. The kitten, who is still really small, tends to dig up the nuts cached by the other two – he’s really good at that! Of the older pair, the boy is the dominant squirrel. It’s entertaining to watch the female try to get at the nuts – when the male sees her he tends to sit and eat the nuts on the feeder so she can’t access it.
Karen Miller, Inverness-shire, Scotland
‘We have been cultivating many plants native to the region’
I am an almost 90-year-old lawyer who has found solace in my rooftop garden during the quarantine months. My favourite visitors are the hummingbirds: it can be difficult for them to find somewhere to rest and be at peace in the noise of the city down below. I am glad that they can find a place to be at peace here on my rooftop garden – their company is always welcome. We have been cultivating many plants native to the region and have even harvested some guava fruit, and three different types of limes. Various cacti and many varying flowers drinking up the sunlight that comes through the windows are such a wonderful sight and I am grateful for the amazing colours and scents.
Patrocinio González Blanco, Mexico City
‘My wife’s wedding gift to me 35 years ago was a compost bin’
As a kid, I read about composting and decided: why should I throw out stuff when it could benefit my little piece of earth? My wife’s wedding gift to me 35 years ago was a compost bin – she knew I loved playing in the dirt. The secret is regularly using a pitchfork to “stir” the mix and adding a little water in the hot summer months. The good news (if there is any) from Covid is that my garden has never looked better. This is simply because I have spent untold hours on my hands and knees working with the plants. I truly believe that instead of paying huge amounts of money to see a psychiatrist, buy a shovel instead and some good clippers. I have made many new friends with folks who see me outside – all the time – working in the dirt. We have a 1.5metre long rat snake that visits our garden and last month I had a very small (20cm) baby rat snake grab my finger. It was great – this meant that Mom was comfortable enough to have babies in the garden.
Thomas Snitch, Bethesda, Maryland, US
‘We have been … focusing on habitat species for birds and invertebrates’
We have been planting locally native plant species in our front garden for nearly 20 years, focusing on habitat species for birds and invertebrates with shrubs and tussock grasses, trees and flowering ground-cover species. I have recorded more than 30 species of birds such as scarlet honey-eaters, superb fairywrens and king parrots, to name a few. Generally they are just passing through. I have recorded 50 individual species of beetle in my garden (really a very small revegetation area) including an uncommon species called lycidmimicking longhorn beetle, of which there are only 11 sightings for the whole of Australia. For such a small area it’s amazing what I do find. This spider I have sent is called a common peacock spider which were only discovered in Australia a few years ago. The dance the males do to impress the less colourful female is really pretty special for such a tiny creature.
Geoff Boyes, Mansfield, Victoria, Australia
‘We offer a free service to cut holes in fences’
I created Barnes Hedgehogs six years ago to help and protect our local hedgehogs. We offer a free service to cut holes in fences as part of the construction of the Barnes Hedgehog Highway. We have cut approximately 800 holes in the area including in Mortlake, Putney, Sheen and Richmond. Barnes Hedgehogs has become part of the area and locals really take care of their hedgehogs. The superhighway helps the local population a great deal; I don’t have an exact number but we’ve had more than 200 reported sightings.
We do lectures in local schools and are working with the London Zoological Institute and the London Wetland Centre on creating a huge London hedgehog survey. I received an award in the House of Lords for my work.
Michel Birkenwald, Barnes, London
‘I planted for pollinators in purples and pinks’
I am 48 and have just quit a big corporate job to become a student again. I am studying for a master’s in nature writing. Living in a newbuild flat, I saw my garden as the proverbial blank sheet of paper. Aside from a single tree and a patch of lawn, it was a desert of a back yard. I planted for pollinators in purples and pinks, hung birdfeeders, put up a bird box, dug a mini-pond, and created a “don’t mow, let it grow” border. The insects arrived first. Jewels of butterflies sparkled in the sun, ladybirds gobbled up aphids on wild roses, and bumblebees busied themselves filling their pollen baskets. My delight when the dunnock arrived to be my first bird companion of the year made me feel joyous for the first time in weeks. Spending time in nature and creating a home for wildlife was a tonic. It was the place I felt happiest in those loneliest of weeks of lockdown.
Vanessa Wright, St Albans, Hertfordshire
‘I have many different features such as log piles, a pond, bee hotels…’
I don’t have a garden but an allotment, which I garden with wildlife in mind. I have many different features that attract wildlife such as log piles, a pond, bee hotels, lots of flowers, leaf piles and two mini wildflower meadows. I am also not too tidy, and don’t use any pesticides. I make my own compost and the compost heaps attract their own set of wildlife as well – so far I have seen foxes, hedgehogs, wood mice, frogs, newts and many insects.
Nadine Mitschunas, Wallingford, Oxfordshire
‘One thing I have done is … nothing!’
One thing I have done is … nothing! When the flowers are gone I have left the seed heads out for the birds and left the fallen leaves for the worms. We have a resident hedgehog under our shed and I have been putting out hedgehog food to help him fatten up for the winter, and he keeps the slugs under control. We have several birdfeeders where we have loads of tits, finches, sparrows, dunnocks, wood pigeons, doves and a pair of sparrowhawks that sometimes use the feeders as their buffet. The birds are so used to us that we can sit out and watch as they squabble and feed their babies a few metres away. The garden and all its inhabitants have been a great joy to us during the last few months.
Jean McKendree, Westow, York
‘I treat my back yard as a pocket prairie’
I plant mostly native plants in my garden and treat my back yard as a pocket prairie. I have a lot of fragrant mist flower bushes in my back yard. They bloom in late October and November, and attract lots of butterflies. I will have 10-30 monarchs each fall. I believe they are using my yard as a refuelling stop on their migration towards Mexico. Fragrant mist flower is actually native to Rio Grande valley rather than the Houston area. It is considered a noxious weed in parts of the world, and it is very difficult to control. I complain about it all year but then fall in love with it again when I see all the butterflies and bees using it in October.
Silvia Gederberg, Houston, Texas
‘I have sown wildflower seeds, created large dead hedges … and put up a bat box’
When we moved in we planted an apple tree and a plum tree. When I was young my father had a rather large garden with fruit trees, so I have that memory of picking fruit as a child. I planted them because I wanted a bit more fruit and because they’re also good for wildlife. The bumblebees love the blossom, and we also have leafcutter bees, honeybees, ladybirds and shield bugs. I have also sown wildflower seeds, created large dead hedges to provide habitat and put up a bat box and nest box. I am currently digging a pond. We don’t have any security lighting or things like that here – we like it dark.
Jonathan Best, Eltham, London
‘We have found that the squirrels prefer the hazelnuts’
We have three red squirrel feeders in our garden, which we fill with hazel and monkey nuts. We have found that the squirrels prefer the hazelnuts, especially the Italian variety, as they are the most expensive. We have identified four individual squirrels (usually by their colour and the markings on their tails) who visit very regularly. One particular squirrel has very frayed, “tatty” ears. They are busiest in the morning and in the last good hour before dusk. They were somewhat confused when the clocks went back, as they had to go to bed hungrier than usual. It is a privilege to have them in our garden and we look forward to every winter and the wonderful sight of seeing the squirrels in the snow.
Ian Wade, Outhgill, Mallerstang, Cumbria
‘We have two small “wild meadow” areas, which are incredibly beneficial for wildlife’
In early 2018 our communal garden (maybe better described as our communal sad lawn) lost its last standing tree (a mature silver birch) to disease. While this was a very sad moment, it triggered me to act: I’d always thought we could do so much more with the space, and felt that it was our responsibility to contribute what we could to protect our local, rapidly shrinking biodiversity. The first step was easy. That autumn we replaced our one tree with three: one silver birch, because the previous one had been popular with the residents; and two hawthorn trees, which are great for birds. Now we also have two small “wild meadow” areas, which are incredibly beneficial for wildlife. These areas were beautiful and full of interest from spring to late summer. We were happy to see some bee orchids appear in there, and we even had passersby taking photos.
Emily Boldy, Cambridge
‘The flowers I grow have attracted a huge amount of pollinators and butterflies’
I recently had a change of career – I’m in my 50s – and completed the Royal Horticultural Society exams; now I grow cut flowers in my back garden. During the first lockdown we decided to build a pond in the garden to encourage wildlife – especially hedgehogs. In the short time we’ve had it we’ve been lucky to see dragonflies and damselflies lay their eggs. We’ve had bats coming in for the insects and drinking and we are hoping to see tadpoles and maybe some newts next spring. The flowers I grow have attracted a huge amount of pollinators and butterflies, which have been a joy to watch during this pandemic.
Pippa Browning, Oxfordshire
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ready incredible performance, a second hit for Moss this year (after the Invisible Man). Bouts of agoraphobia and writer’s block come and go, but for Shirley and many before and after, the tripwire that is (male) validation remains. Adrian Horton
The dance – Another Round
Mads Mikkelsen: fine actor, handsome bastard, meme king, drily witty interviewee, star of a Rihanna music video. Does he have to be a good dancer too? That Mikkelsen has moves is no secret: the 55-year-old Dane trained at a Swedish ballet academy in his youth, dancing professionally for a decade before turning to acting aged 30. But no film had fully capitalised on those skills until the startling climax of Another Round, Thomas Vinterberg’s mordantly funny, moving drama about voluntary alcoholism, in which Mikkelsen’s jaded schoolteacher – back on the booze that nearly ruined him, laden with conflicting emotions over the death of a friend and the uncertain status of his marriage – dances it all out in the street, amid hordes of revelling, newly graduated students.
On paper, it sounds impossibly hokey. On screen, it’s beautiful and bittersweet and laced with danger: not a purely joyful moment of catharsis, but a visceral release that could turn to self-destruction at any moment. Beginning hesitantly before recklessly giving in to his own body, Mikkelsen plays (and dances) the scene exquisitely – many a Hollywood musical director will wonder how they could have missed him before now, but this vodka shot of choreographed splendour is all the more thrilling for coming out of the blue. Guy Lodge
The karaoke – Tesla
In his new film Tesla, writer-director Michael Almereyda has the good sense to realize that fidelity to the facts only holds the biopic form back, stifling more expressive ideas about our notion of a famed figure in favor of awkward, literal restaging. Almereyda takes a relaxed attitude to the details of electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla’s life, fine with the odd iPhone or Macbook here and there as a nod to the far-reaching technological influence that the inventor and his peers would have for generations to come.
The film fully leaves its own reality behind in a seeming non sequitur coda that sees Tesla busting out an admirable karaoke rendition of Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World against greenscreen backdrops. The song’s lyrical content presents a clear pun, landing like a punch line at the conclusion to a movie about brilliant men angling for their piece of history. But Ethan Hawke’s performance sells the emotionality of the moment, each word weighted with the painful knowledge that he and his cohort cannot stop the runaway train they’ve sent careening into the future. Charles Bramesco
The restaurant – The Invisible Man
A modern and merciless spin on the classic novel, Leigh Whannell’s #MeToo horror movie takes HG Wells’s invisible bogeyman, and transforms him into the sociopathic ex-boyfriend of every woman’s nightmares. Donning a hi-tech invisibility suit, Adrian terrorizes his former beau Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) by committing violent pranks and systematically cutting her off from her inner circle. It’s typical abuser behavior that alienates the victim by making her seem insane and unstable.
In a last-ditch effort before things go dramatically south, Cecilia convinces her sister to meet at a crowded downtown restaurant where she hopes to prove, with recently discovered evidence, that she’s not as crazy as she seems. Adrian wouldn’t pull any funny business in a public place, would he? Turns out he would. And in a genuinely shocking scene that upends what appears to be a rare stretch of catharsis and calm, a shiny knife levitates next to Cecilia’s head as she pours her heart out at the dinner table. The two women exchange disturbed glances before the weapon slices open her sister’s neck, and is placed immediately in Cecilia’s hand. It’s an expertly choreographed moment that unwinds drastic, lifechanging consequences with a few strokes and in a matter of seconds. No one is safe and no place is off limits. And with the right tools, it only takes an instant to turn an innocent person into a raving lunatic. Beatrice Loayza
The clinic – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
It’s unlikely 2020 will be remembered for the laughs but this hilarious-yet-horrifying scene strikes just the right tone. The set-up: Sacha Baron Cohen, in double disguise as Borat as an “American”, buys his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) a cupcake with a little plastic baby figurine on top. In her excitement, Tutar accidentally swallows the figurine. So they head to the nearest “doctor”: actually a pregnancy centre in North Carolina run by antiabortion Christians. Their every line is wide open to misinterpretation. “I have a baby inside me and I want to take it out of me,” Tutar tells the pro-life pastor. “I feel bad because I was the one who put the baby in her,” says Borat, slapping himself on the wrist. “I was just trying to give my daughter pleasure.” And so on.
Appallingly, despite believing he is dealing with a genuine case of pregnancy by incest, the pastor insists Tutar keep the baby: “God is the one who creates life, and God doesn’t make accidents.” It’s multi-level brilliance: classic comedy of misunderstanding made all the funnier by the pranked pastor’s unwitting contribution, but also biting satire, revealing the true awfulness of Trump-era conservatism. History and comedy students alike should be studying it in years to come. Steve Rose
The pamphlet – Hamilton
Composer Lin-Manuel Miranda admitted that he will never top Hamilton’s emotional rollercoaster musical number Satisfied. Agreed! The song has Renee Elise Goldsberry showing off an exhilarating singing-and-rapping range reminiscent of Lauryn Hill, as her character Angelica pines for brother-inlaw Alexander Hamilton (Miranda). But Satisfied’s emotional arc isn’t complete until a much later trap number: The Reynolds Pamphlet.
In the show’s most breathtakingly intimate confrontation, Goldsberry’s Angelica returns to the stage to support her sister after Alexander makes his extra-marital affair public. The sequence brilliantly pivots between the private blow to the public humiliation. We lean in so close you can see Goldsberry’s jugular veins throbbing as she drops that crushing refrain: “God I hope you’re satisfied!” And then it takes a step back to catch pamphlets and dancers flying across the stage, while Daveed Diggs’s Thomas Jefferson chants, “Never gonna be president now.”
The salt-on-the-wound is Jonathan Groff’s King George III’s hilariously petty prance across the stage, which left me gasping for air. Radheyan Simonpillai
The boat – Tenet
The release of Tenet was meant to make 2020 less complicated. Films would be back on the big screens and punters would be back on the reclining chairs lapping them up. But even by Christopher Nolan’s standards, Tenet was an exhausting tangle of quantum mechanics. The camp villainy of Kenneth Branagh’s Russian oligarch Andrei Sator was a welcome relief then, a reassuringly one-note performance that cut through the riddles, including the four-directional palindrome referenced by his last name. But pride comes before a pratfall, and while little in this film was ever truly final, the satisfactory smoothness of his exit brought the silver lining of slapstick to a cloud of complexity.
All it took was a bullet to the chest, a slick of sun-screen, a shove and a polished deck, and we cheered the slip, boink, splash as he belly-flopped postmortem into the water. Among the film’s reversals, replays and ‘ temporal pincer movements’, the unstoppably lo-tech forward motion of his longawaited demise saved Tenet, and my night out – if not, as hoped, cinema itself. Pamela Hutchinson
The last call – Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
The day-into-night-into-day last call of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets claims to be unscripted, which makes its heartbreaking climax all the more memorable. As the characters swoop around one another like increasingly inebriated electrons, we giggle at their slurred japes, but stop dead at moments of unmasked honesty.
When Michael, the older ex-actor with a face that looks carved from rock, is saucily reclined on “his” couch, tousling the hair of young musician Peter in an ironic T-shirt, the shot is tight on their faces in near-erotic repose. The film’s lack of judgment is temporarily dropped. Michael sees a younger version of himself in Peter, and warns him to get help – to “get out” – while he can.
“There is nothing more ‘oh my fuck is he ever gonna go away,’ than a guy who used to do stuff, who doesn’t do stuff no more, because he’s in a bar,” he says. The younger man is, sadly, too far gone to hear him. Jordan Hoffman
The kiss – Freaky
There were few films this year that made me miss the cinema experience quite as much as body swap comedy horror Freaky, a shoulda-been-a crowdpleaser stuffed with show-stopping *insert audience reaction* moments. Taking a goofy premise – what if Freaky Friday but a slasher movie killer and his victim – and squeezing a surprising amount of fun, humour, queerness and, shockingly, heart out of it, Happy Death Day writer-director Christopher Landon made me desperately wish I was seeing his follow-up on a big screen surrounded by equally thrilled cinemagoers.
The scene that made me most curious to know how a packed Friday night crowd might receive it is both modest and audacious, a quieter moment in an often loud movie that takes place in the dark backseat of a car between two flirtatious high schoolers. The obvious twist being that one of them is a shy girl stuck in the body of a grown man (“a mass murderer with yellow teeth”) played with thought and specificity by a never-better Vince Vaughn, finally able to confess her feelings to a longtime crush. What’s most engaging about the scene is that none of it is played for laughs and instead it’s rather sweet, a bullied girl finding a way to feel empowered and, oddly, desired, while in a man’s body. The kiss that comes is a surprise to the pair and within such slick straight studio framework, a surprise to us as well. Benjamin
Lee
The snowfall – About Endlessness
Roy Andersson’s films are all about moments – laid end to end there must be about two dozen in this meditative film about disillusion and failure. (Not everyone gets Andersson; you really have to suspend all normal expectations and just let it unfold.) Each shot is a single scene of intensely felt emotion, mostly ( but not always) revolving around late-life frustration and despair. The priest who has lost his faith, and is physically pushed out of a doctor’s office at closing time; the “honour killer” sobbing with regret; the woman on a station platform with no one to greet her. But it’s the strangely optimistic scene near the end that endures: snow falls with hypnotic beauty, and a gloomy looking man announcing to a barful of strangers that “everything is fantastic”. At first, he is totally ignored; but one by one the others turn round and – sort of – agree. “I think so, at least,” repeats the gloomy man; that is a mantra anyone could be proud of. Andrew Pulver
The dog – I’m Thinking of Ending Things
I loved Charlie Kaufman’s latest, right til the last half hour or so when it lost me the moment they started balletdancing and I felt not just confused but disappointed in myself for being so dim – an unhappy sensation. But the first two-thirds, in which new, ill-matched yet weirdly in-sync couple Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons head to his parents for supper, and then the parents turn out to be David Thewlis and Toni Collette on maximum wackiness, was terrific.
The first completely genius bit, in my book, comes just as Plemons is giving Buckley an uncomfortable house tour and she, mindful of being in a remote creepy farmhouse and of every horror cliche - and the grisly pig story she’s just heard in the barn – queries why the cellar door is so riddled with scratches. Plemons bats it off – a dog, he says, clearly stalling. She asks more: what type, what name, where? “So many questions,” Plemons stutters, in a corner, reaching for boilerplate answers – Jimmy, a border collie, out playing.
Yikes. The doom in your stomach grows. And then, of course, in comes Jimmy! And he’s a collie who’s been outdoors! The relief! Jimmy shakes his fur dry. But he doesn’t stop. He just keeps on shaking, very fast, back and forth, like an absolute demon. A tiny thing and absolutely terrifying. Within 30 seconds Kaufman has done it all: pulled the rug, put it back, ripped out the floorboards. You’re left giddy and flailing, and totally suckered by the sensation.