How do I make my garden better for wildlife?

Wildlife needs food, water, shelter and safe passage. Most gardens supply some food and almost no water or shelter, which is why water and untidiness make more difference than another flowering plant.

What you'll need

• A container or liner for water (optional)
• Space to leave unmanaged (optional)

Step by step

1. Add water, in whatever form you can.A pond is best, but a sunken washing-up bowl or a large plant saucer helps enormously. Include a sloping side or stones so animals can get out.
2. Stop tidying everything.Leaf piles, log piles, dead stems left through winter, a patch of long grass. Untidiness is habitat, and this costs nothing and saves work.
3. Stop using pesticides and slug pellets.They remove the food chain the garden depends on. Predators arrive if you give them time and something to eat.
4. Leave seedheads and stems standing over winter.They feed birds and shelter overwintering insects. Cut them back in spring instead of autumn.
5. Make gaps for hedgehogs.A 13cm square gap at the base of a fence lets hedgehogs move between gardens. Isolated gardens are of very limited use to them.
6. Plant for a long flowering season.Something in flower from early spring to late autumn matters more than any particular plant. Early and late flowers are the scarcest and most valuable.
7. Include native plants and single flowers.Double flowers are often sterile and inaccessible to insects. Single open flowers give pollinators something to reach.
8. Reduce or relax the lawn.Letting part of it grow long, or mowing less often, supports far more insects than a closely cut lawn and reduces the work.

Tips

• A pond does not need to be large. A container pond on a balcony attracts insects within weeks.
• Night-scented flowers support moths, which are important pollinators and are often overlooked entirely.
• Bird feeders need regular cleaning. Dirty feeders spread disease and can do more harm than the food does good.

Common mistakes

• Adding a water feature with vertical sides — Animals fall in and cannot get out. Always include a sloping side, a ramp or stacked stones.
• Clearing everything in autumn — You remove the shelter and food that insects and birds need through winter. Leave it and tidy in spring.
• Using slug pellets and then wondering where the hedgehogs went — Pesticides remove the base of the food chain and can poison predators directly.

Questions people ask