Grow a garden for wildlife Arthur Parkinson on how to attract the birds and the bees

Insects and birds should be valued as the beating heart of a garden as they add beauty, life and provide therapy, says gardening expert Arthur Parkinson. Here, he takes us round his own outdoor space and shows how he nurtures nature

Encourage wildlife

Making our gardens hospitable for living creatures doesn’t mean allowing them to run wild. Open spaces can be as formal as you like, but we can choose plants that are both beautiful and life-giving. This is something I always bear in mind when deciding what to grow, although I do have a love/hate relationship with garden guests – I’d like more dashing peregrine falcons and fewer feral pigeons. I love the idea of a Beatrix Potter idyll of twittering sparrows, singing robins, slug-eating frogs and even bunnies! And if only we had hedgehogs!

Ditch chemicals

One of the most important things to do is to avoid using chemicals. Herbicides and pesticides are still seen as an easy solution, even in some professional horticultural training. But, thankfully, attitudes are changing – a few years ago you’d have been in the minority for shunning pesticides, but now science tells us that lots of chemicals are not just bad for insects, but bad for everything on the planet. If we could banish these chemicals, we’d do a huge amount for biodiversity. We need to look after our vital and beautiful bees rather than endanger them, turn public grasslands into flower meadows and allow bees to use our gardens as a refuge.

Independent nurseries, more likely to be taking an organic, non-chemical approach from the outset, will usually be the safest way of stocking your garden with truly wildlife-friendly plants. Most seed merchants should be able to confirm which chemicals their growers are using in their fields and whether they are bee-friendly. The organic bulb market is now growing, too, which is good news.

The back yard

Blackbirds find sanctuary in our tiny back garden, which is my mum’s domain. Mixed dried fruits, soaked mealworms and chopped apple make up the daily menu that Mum serves to Mr and Mrs Blackbird. The yard is shaded by a huge neighbouring horse chestnut tree, so many of my favourite flowers do poorly here, as they are sun-lovers.

I try not to be too much of a cuckoo on my mum’s patch. I admire her patience in letting plants fade away naturally, rather than my own ‘off with its head’ approach. In place of sun-loving annuals are salvias that cope in the dappled shade. They include ‘Amistad’, perhaps the most popular of the lot, ‘Love and Wishes’, whose vibrant pink petals appear from burgundy slipper-like bracts, and the lava-like ‘Ember’s Wish’. Altogether, these create a paintbox of primary colours through summer and autumn in the little stone flowerbeds.

If the winters are mild and these salvias are not pruned back until spring properly arrives, then the majority of them will prove to be perennial; a compost mulch around them will help. More reliably hardy, though, are my mum’s lobelias, which flower in a range of purples and maroons. Perennial phlox does well here, too; if you can’t be bothered to grow sweet peas, grow this instead for its perfume.

The roses ‘Charles de Mills’ and ‘Tuscany Superb’ climb up the fence. They are planted with clematis ‘Etoile Violette’ that snakes up through them. Clematis need to be fed and watered a lot, especially if they are in pots, and they will only thrive in the largest of these. A roofing slate should always be shoved in at the base of newly planted clematis so that the roots are shaded from the sun.

‘I try not to be too much of a cuckoo on my mum’s patch’

Climbing plants

Try to use climbers to dress a fence, like garden walls; if you have a new garden always plant these first, as the most ornamental and beautiful of them take time to get going. People are frightened of the fast growers; Vitis coignetiae, the crimson glory vine with its dramatic leaves, and its relation, the country-pilecladding Parthenocissus quinquefolia (Virginia creeper). I have spent hours with a paint scraper removing Virginia creeper from brickwork, but to see these climbers in the autumn fading into burnished reds, maroons and oranges is quite a sight, so I think it’s worth having them, if you dare. If you plant something vigorous and prune it often, you will keep it under control.

Hazel hurdles

I love these ‘fences’ as they instantly give a cottage-garden feel to any space. A climber, such as a Virginia creeper, would help hold them together once they go brittle and start to fall apart. I am tempted to suggest planting them with ivy for the same reason, but this may be risky; the runners that ivy puts out would need to be kept in check. But ivy, in flower, is one of the best pollinators, so don’t be too quick to cut it all away; recent studies have shown that it helps to insulate stonework and buildings rather than destroy them, but obviously keep it from reaching any roof tiles!

Bird paradise

A garden with fences covered in foliage is more accommodating to birds; the blackbirds certainly seem happy in our back garden, a refuge from a hostile world with more cats, more magpies and fewer hedges than ever. Town life, indeed any life, would be unbearable without the triumphant song of the male blackbird; in the summer, towards the longest day, they sing long into the evening. But how blackbirds are managing to find enough worms and bugs during the almost rainless Aprils we’ve had over the past few years amazes me. They are grateful for the mealworms they’re served in the morning; soaking transforms them from dried crisps into soft delicacies that a baby blackbird can easily swallow. These treats have to be hidden between pots so they’re not scoffed by greedy wood pigeons, though.

‘Fruit and mealworms make up the menu that Mum serves Mr and Mrs Blackbird’

Bees and butterflies

There is nothing more magical than seeing bees and butterflies visiting your flowers. I love the fairy wings that bees have and their fur coats, ranging from burnished orange to jet black, to apricot-brown. Watching these creatures go about their day is essential therapy for me. Even in a small space you should try to provide as much flower power as you can for pollinators through the spring, summer and autumn seasons. These vital insects give the garden a true sense of being alive; a window box can support them if the right flowers – rich in both pollen and nectar – are being grown in it.

While native species of wildflowers are indeed excellent from the point of view of a bee or a butterfly, you don’t need to turn your garden into a wildflower meadow for it to be a pollinator paradise. Garden flowers, if they are single or semi-double varieties, are hugely valuable to pollinators. These are the flowers that will naturally have nectar- and pollen-rich anthers and stamens. As a rule, any flower that resembles a daisy, with an outline of petals around its middle, is attractive to insects, as are almost all flowers that look as if they are related to thistles.

Certain flowers will attract particular species more than others. A dainty chocolate cosmos flower, for example, will hold the weight of a honey bee perfectly, but it will not easily accommodate the heavier, helicopter-like bumblebee, which will make them sway about too much. Bumbles prefer the larger landing pads of sunflowers and single dahlias.

We need nettles

It seems hypocritical of me to proclaim myself a saviour of insects when my garden is without nettles!

If I had a larger garden or an allotment, I’d definitely have a big patch because nettles provide a vital nursery for the caterpillars of the prettiest of butterflies – the Peacocks, Tortoiseshells, Red Admirals and Commas. No nettles means no caterpillars and no butterflies. Nettles grow in my dad’s garden, and when the black Peacock caterpillars are spotted, the entire plant is covered with horticultural fleece to try to save them from being eaten by wasps! • Extracted from The Flower Yard (Kyle Books) by Arthur Parkinson