Top Tips: Make your Garden a Habitat Heaven
Helping your spring garden and its eco system
1. Space for water: Whether you have a natural pond to allow dragonflies and amphibians to breed, or just a simple birdbath for bathing and drinking water for your feathered friends, water can be a great addition to your garden.
2. Cut your perennials in the Spring: You will have left valuable food for birds in seed heads and shelter for insects in the hollow stems over the frosty months. Now is the time for cutting back and tidying!
3. Don 't clear all of your dead wood away: It is a valuable habitat for your garden, giving shelter to a multitude of amphibians, small mammals and invertebrates. Look for a shady corner to pile it in and allow your garden guests to arrive.
4. Use a compost heap: This will again provide food and shelter for animals such as hedgehogs and grass snakes as well as year round nutrients for insectivorous animals. Compost is also an excellent free mulch and soil conditioner for your garden.
5. Train climbing plants over trellis, fences and up bare walls: Climbers are also a great source of food for birds, insects and small animals. They also help to disguise dull walls and add privacy to your garden.
6. Control those weeds using mulch: try to use less chemicals in your garden by encouraging natural predators of those garden pests. Song thrushes, toads and frogs all love to eat slugs and ladybirds absolutely love aphids!
7. Leave a part of your lawn uncut: Long grass near to your compost bins can encourage grasshoppers, small mammals and caterpillars to camp in your garden.
Hopefully this has given you some ideas to use in your garden this Spring. We'd love to help you out any way we can.
