Kids Biodiversity and tree planting
What you plant in your garden and how you look after it can make the difference between a green desert and a richly diverse habitat. Anja Murray of RTÉ lyric fm’s Nature File tells Stephen Meyler about greening your plot
First up, why should I plant a tree?
Well, there are lots of reasons, but in the rst place, trees are beautiful! The green leaves, moving in the wind, creating dappled patterns in the sun and changing through the seasons, all enrich our lives and the places we live and work. Then, and this is particularly true if you plant a native tree species, they provide a habitat and food for so many species – insects, birds and mammals – that really help the biodiversity of any garden, big or small. Trees in cities also have a big e ect on pollution. They absorb chemicals and they also physically remove dust from the air. Globally, of course, trees, like all green plants, release the oxygen we need to breathe, allowing us to live on the planet.
What sort of trees are best to plant in gardens?
Smaller native species like birch, hazel, rowan or hawthorn are all good, as are crab-apples. You can’t eat the apples but the trees have a really gorgeous blossom and the fruit is food for lots of creatures. You can get dwarf varieties of apples as well, which you can grow in a pot if you don’t have a garden.
Birch is a great tree for the garden, as it is a lovely tree and because the leaves are really small it won’t cast a heavy shade in your garden.
I have recently planted two female holly trees in my small city garden, and they have owers that insects love as well as the berries that come afterwards, Because holly is naturally an understorey forest tree, it will grow in the shade so it is useful for gardens. Holly is also the food plant of the holly blue, a native Irish butter y.
What about non-native trees, such as sycamores, which bees seem to like when they are owering in spring?
Yes, they compare in terms of quantity of invertebrates, but the problem with trees like sycamores is they’re everywhere, crowding out native species and they can grow to be very big, which is a problem in the garden. There are also things like Buddleia, the butter y bush, which pollinators love, but it
self-seeds and does pretty well by itself.
What about plants that have naturalised in Ireland, like Fuchsia or Crocosmia?
They look lovely, but they are quite invasive, especially the orange Crocosmia, so I would not recommend planting those because they really take over. That happened in my last garden.
What can you plant to make a small garden more biodiverse?
Climbers are great because you’re making use of your space, vertically as well as on the ground. I like native honeysuckle it is gorgeous, making this spray of tubular owers and the leaves are food for some wonderful di erent invertebrates. Honeysuckle also puts out scent more strongly at night and that’s to attract the moths that pollinate them. They in turn are food for bats, so planting a native honeysuckle – a lovely plant with beautiful owers that won’t take over the garden – creates the base of a food chain. Another native shrub that not many people have heard about is the guelder rose, which has these really beautiful umbellifer white owers and in the autumn, beautiful little berries, juicy red ones, which are great for wildlife and the leaf colour in autumn is really good too.
So with something like guelder rose, I think you’re getting the bene t for wildlife with the owers and berries and then you’re getting the bene ts of a beautiful shrub for your garden.
What if you don’t have the space for a tree?
There are loads of perennial plants that you can grow. There’s really good information on the All-ireland Pollinator
Plan website (pollinators. ie) about all the di erent pollinators and the plants to grow that will really encourage them. One group of plants that I have discovered in the last year are native roses – there are actually ten of them – they don’t have the huge owers of garden roses, but they are beautiful. The scent is wonderful and they have rosehips in autumn that are a food source for wildlife.