Wildlife Gardening
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Gardening for wildlife  doesn't mean that you have to let your garden turn into a jungle of weeds.   You can grow  the flowers, shrubs  and trees that you like, but it does  help if  you grow some native species  that provide  food and  shelter for birds, insects and other animals.   Access to fresh water in a pond or bird  bath is  essential and allowing a part of your garden to grow naturally with long grass and even nettles  will do much to encourage butterflies to lay their eggs.   A wild flower meadow needs low soil fertility, but if your soil is  rich and damp then a primrose and fritillary meadow might be right for you.

My Wildlife Garden

Snakes-head fritillary

The aim is to achieve a balance so that some of the birds you feed  during the  winter will stay with you and eat greenfly and other pests  during the summer.  The one essential rule is that you must NEVER use any chemicals.  so chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides  are out. They do more harm than good and  you will save a great deal of money if you don't buy any.  That includes  slug pellets which poison frogs  and induce paralysis in hedgehogs when they eat poisoned slugs.

Red Admiral

Frogs need ponds

 

Song thrushes  are seldom seen in gardens  now because we have poisoned  the  snails  that they used  to catch and shatter on a nearby stone - the  thrush's anvil.  The key to a successful wildlife garden is  to be less tidy, to avoid all chemicals and to just enjoy the creatures  that will share it with you.  The basic requirements are water, food and shelter and somewhere for you to sit and watch the wildlife that will come to share  your garden.  You really can make a difference  and  the best book to help you on your way is this one by Chris Baines
The ladybird is the gardener's best friend and will clean up all of the green fly from your roses.

Gardeners often talk about "friends and foes". They tend to divide insects into those that they think are beneficial or attractive (bees, ladybirds, butterflies) and those that are harmful (wasps, greenflies, cabbage whites). The wildlife gardener understands that all are part of an inter-related, mutually supportive web of life.

Plants in your wildlife garden will come under attack and leaves will sometimes be reduced to lacy skeletons. This is sawfly larvae on viburnum.
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But the shrub still flowers and will often put out new leaves. If you are tempted to spray, then your wildlife garden is doomed. You will break the foodchain and the baby birds that are being fed the sawfly larvae will starve. They won't grow up to feed on next year's larvae and won't be there to clear your roses of greenfly. So you spray again and soon your garden lacks the birds, butterflies and bees that you want to attract. Pests are food.
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We all love bees and we all fear wasps.
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Wasps are persecuted and so misunderstood. They won't sting unless you bother them. They are carnivorous so will hunt and take back to their nests greenfly, caterpillars and other mini-beasts. Then, in late summer when the social fabric of the nest breaks down after the last wasp grubs have matured, the individul wasps seek sweet food and then go for your jam butties. Then the nest dies and only the queen survives. So there is really no need to destroy wasp nests as they only last for one season.
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I grow lots of roses and am never bothered by greenfly. Bluetits love them and work frantically to feed their youngsters. Any greenfly that the birds miss, the ladybirds, lacewings, hoverflies, wasps and other predators clear up. These roses are NEVER sprayed
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Some insects like these hoverflies mimic wasps for protection so that birds leave them alone
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They fool us too and some people will fear, swat or spray any black and yellow insect. Is this a bee, a wasp or a fly?
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This flesh-fly doesn't pretend to be something other than itself. Its larvae feed on dead animals and that makes us squeamish, but in doing so they are cleaning up your garden.
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Not all spiders spin webs. This is a wolf spider that will hide and leap out on a fly that lands nearby. What drama there is every day in every corner of your wildlife garden!
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