Wildlife-friendly gardening

You walk out of your back door to the sound of silence. The air is still. There is no movement. No birdsong, no stirring in the leaves. No greenfly on your roses; no slugs munching your hostas. It is the perfect garden. Oh no it isn’t! This isn’t a garden; this is a lifeless desert. Gardens are living organisms that can – and should – support many forms of wildlife. Each living thing in your patch is part of a complex food chain that gardeners have a duty to maintain, and that duty comes with many rewards: you will marvel at the blackbird’s song, the whirr of a dragonfly across a garden pond and the earthworms that incorporate organic matter into your soil. Greenfly feed ladybirds, slugs feed frogs and thrushes: we learn to tolerate the wildlife that irritates in order to have a vibrant, healthy

garden.

Grow single flowers such as cosmos to attract pollinators and provide bees with nectar