Documents: Foreword by Chris Baines, Getting involved, Free leaflets, Wildlife trusts, Wildflower nurseries, Creating wildlife habitats, Wildlife tips, Links, Natural England, Bibliography, Acknowledgments.

Creating wildlife habitats

Hedges, Flowery meadows, Ponds and marshes, Walls and fences.

Hedges

Tens of thousands of miles of hedges were removed from the countryside in the last 30 years of the twentieth century. This process has now largely ended but its consequences are still being felt. Individual gardeners can compensate for the loss in a small way: even a few yards of hedgerow may support a great variety of wildlife.

Valuable for:

Butterflies like gatekeeper, meadow brown, large skipper, speckled wood, brimstone, green-veined white, orange-tip and holly blue; moths; mammals, including bank vole, wood mouse, weasel and hedgehog; birds including blackbird, song thrush, dunnock, robin, goldfinch, bullfinch, chaffinch, wren and warblers;

wildflowers like foxglove, primroses, lesser stitchwort, lesser celandine, red campion, Italian lords-and-ladies, garlic mustard, barren strawberries and wild strawberries, common dog violets and early dog violets, sweet violet, ramsons, wood anemone, wood sage, wood sorrel, wood spurge, yellow archangel, yellow pimpernel and many species of fern including hart's tongue, hard shield-fern, male-fern, Lady-fern, broad buckler and soft shield-fern.

Useful tips:

• Use a mixture of native species of tree and shrub. The species growing in nearby countryside hedges may be a good guide to those that will do well in your garden but most of the native species will do well even in very urban situations.
• Plant hedges from October to March: never in the summer or in very dry weather.
• Plant fairly densely: at least four plants per square metre.
• Native species are likely to be best for wildlife, especially insects and other small animals.
• If you want good security, and some protection for birds against cats, choose mainly thorny or prickly species like hawthorn, blackthorn or holly.
• Evergreen shrubs like holly and yew provide dense cover during the winter, and the dead leaves of beech and hornbeam often don't fall for a long time, so providing a good winter screen. They all offer good early spring nesting sites.
• Other possible species include guelder rose, wayfaring tree, spindle, hazel, field maple, dogwood and the native wild privet.
• Traveller's joy (old man's beard) may tend to take over but add climbers like the native honeysuckle, dog rose and bramble.
• Ensure that trees and shrubs are well-watered and mulched while they are getting established.
• Bare-rooted trees and shrubs (whips) are extremely cheap, less-demanding. (needing no stakes), more likely to survive than older trees and establish themselves very quickly.
• Be bold and prune the young trees and shrubs in the first year to encourage new growth at the base and thus a thicker hedge.
• An alternative is to try and grow plants from local seed: far more difficult but very rewarding.
• Conditions - especially light levels - at the base of hedges will change rapidly as the hedge grows, so it may pay to wait before trying to establish herbaceous plants or bulbs such as bluebells.
• If you can create a bank on which to grow your hedge, this will provide more opportunities for plants like primroses, violets and stitchworts.
• Use the base of the hedge for garden clippings and leaves to establish a richer soil.
• Yew is very slow growing. Holly and beech are good at remaining thick at the base for many years, while hawthorn and hazel need periodic coppicing or laying to keep them dense.
• Apart from brambles and roses, most native hedge shrubs produce flowers only on last season's growth. So, if you want berries and nuts, don't trim every year!
• Don't plant yew (or rhododendron) where horses or other livestock can reach it
• Never cut hedges during the nesting season (March to July).

Selected publications

Baines, C. (2000) How to Make a Wildlife Garden. Frances Lincoln

Beckett, K. & G. (1979) Planting Native Trees and Shrubs. Jarrold

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Flowery meadows

On farmland, meadows were once commonly cut for hay at the end of the summer and then grazed by stock. Most of these flower-rich grasslands have now gone - 95% were "improved" (ploughed, re-seeded and fertilised) or converted to arable crops in the 50 years after World War II. There may be 200,000 ha of garden lawns, almost all of which are currently carefully tended to eradicate any wildflower that makes an uninvited appearance. Few people may want to turn their entire lawns into wildflower meadows but these are hugely valuable wildlife habitats, even on a small-scale. Creating them is not easy since lawn soils are generally very rich and weedy, unwanted vegetation can easily take over once regular cutting stops. However, few garden habitats are more rewarding in wildlife terms than a well-made meadow.

Valuable for:

• Hay meadow wild flowers,
• insects such as bees, butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets etc,
• garden birds, which feed on the insects and seeds,
• amphibians - that use meadows as cover.

Useful tips:

• Starting from scratch in a new property, consider sowing wildflower seed harvested from a wild meadow.
• Alternatively, sow a mix of fine-leaved grasses (fescues and bents like common bent at a rate of 2g per m2) with wildflower seed - incorporating species such as red clover, common bird's-foot-trefoil, common knapweed, cowslip, ox-eye daisy, meadow buttercup, and self-heal).
• Other wild flowers can be added to the lawn as bulbs - such as snake's-head fritillaries - or as plug plants.
• If your lawn already consists of fine grasses use these as the basis of a meadow and add in pot grown wild flowers or bulbs.
• Do not try to improve the fertility of the soil - wild flowers do best in poor soils.
• A new lawn will need mowing regularly for the first year of its life.
• In the summer before you want to start growing your meadow, add some seed of yellow-rattle - burying the seed in worm casts, or in a shallow scrape. This plant is a parasite that feeds off the roots of grasses, thereby reducing their vigour and encouraging more wild flowers. It is also a good food source for bees.
• Yellow rattle is an annual and you must allow this plant to produce a little seed each year; but don't let it seed too long or it may kill patches of lawn.
• Do not use other annual wildflower species such as the common poppy - as they may not survive in a lawn.
• Mow the lawn short in late winter, just before bulbs such as fritillaries start to grow and then leave it uncut until July. Allow plants to set seed.
• A tidier effect can be obtained by allowing the most distant part of the lawn to grow tall in the spring (place your bulbs and cowslips here) and progressively allow a little more of the lawn to grow each week. This produces a graduated effect from short to tall meadow.
• When you cut the hay, leave it to dry to attract birds such as house sparrows linnets and goldfinches, which may feed on the seed as it dries out.
• Remove the hay and mow the lawn regularly for the rest of the year. It will look brown at first but will recover rapidly.
• Allowing different parts of the lawn to grow and flower at different times - some early in the spring, others later in the summer, will provide a constant nectar source for insects, and encourage a greater variety of flowers that flower at different times of the year.
• If you cannot grow a meadow, consider allowing your lawn to flower for a few weeks in high summer if it contains plants such as clover. This provides a much-needed source of food for some insects such as bumblebees.
• If you have frogs in the garden, cut your meadow carefully to avoid killing them.

Selected specialist publications:

Lewis, P. (2003) Making Wildflower Meadows, Frances Lincoln Ltd

Steel, J (2002) Meadows and Cornfields, Osmia Publications. Available from web www.wildlife-gardening.co.uk

Verner, Y. (1998) Creating a Flower Meadow, Green Books Ltd

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Ponds and marshes

Garden ponds have made a huge contribution to the conservation of amphibians. Marshland - damp areas at the edges of ponds - can be made when ponds are constructed and is a wildlife habitat in itself.

Valuable for:

Common frogs, common toads, smooth newts, great crested newts, water beetles, dragonflies and damselflies, grass snakes and aquatic and marsh plants. Ponds with fish support fewer species of aquatic animals for the simple reason that fish eat them but toads can co-exist with fish. Orange-tip butterflies lay eggs on cuckooflower, one of many attractive native plants for pond margins or marshes. Others include marsh-marigold, water avens, yellow flag, brooklime, ragged-robin, bogbean and water-plantain.

Useful tips:

• Place your pond in a sunny part of the garden. Warm ponds are better for many types of wildlife such as amphibians, and dragonflies and damselflies. A pond does not have to be too deep - about 60cm is deep enough - but it should have shallow areas as well as this is where frogs will spawn.
• Even tiny ponds will support wildlife but make your pond as large as possible.
• Incorporate areas of marsh habitat as well as deeper water.
• The edges of the pond should be as saucer-like as possible.
• If you must have fish, consider having two ponds, one of them fish-free.
• Try to use British waterweeds and avoid non-native species such as swamp stonecrop or New Zealand pygmy weed Crassula helmsii (also sold as Tillea aquatica), parrot's feather Myriophyllum aquaticum and floating pennywort Hydrocotyle ranunculoides.
• Establish plenty of aquatic plants in the spring to compete with algae. Expect some blanket weed in the first year while plants are becoming established.
• Try to avoid topping up the pond with tap water - it promotes algae and some insects actually live in the draw down zone (exposed mud as the pond dries out). Instead, divert rainwater direct from the roof or top up from water butts.
• Remove weed and leaves in the autumn to avoid de-oxygenation problems.
• Only clear out one section of the pond at a time.
• Leave any vegetation you remove at the side of the pond for a day or so to give the small aquatic animals tangled up in it a chance to get back to the water.
• Surplus pond vegetation makes excellent compost.

Selected specialist publications

Bardsley, L. (2003) The Wildlife Pond Handbook, New Holland Publishers

British Dragonfly Society (1996) Dig a Pond For Dragonflies, British Dragonfly Society

English Nature. (2002) Amphibians in Your Garden: Your Questions Answered.

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Walls and fences

Garden walls and fences covered with climbers add a new dimension to any garden and can help make even a very small garden more attractive to wildlife. The walls of a house are also a potential habitat for many species, especially if they are covered with ivy. Even without vegetation, walls can offer nesting opportunities for birds such as house martins, spotted flycatchers and house sparrows.

Valuable for:

Nesting birds, foraging and hibernating insects, small mammals

Useful tips:

• If you already have a garden wall, put up trellises about 10-15cm away from the wall, attaching them with spacing blocks. Plant climbers 10cm or so away from the trellises: out of the dry zone.
• The space between trellis and wall will be ideal for nesting birds and, on the ground, will provide a relatively safe green corridor for small mammals like bank vole, wood mouse and shrews. Birds using the space for nests may include blackbird and many other species.
• As well as providing cover for nesting birds, wild honeysuckle and ivy will offer hibernation sites for butterflies like brimstone and are good food plants for hawkmoths in the case of honeysuckle and, in the case of ivy, which flowers very late in the season, hoverflies and small tortoiseshells, commas, peacocks and other butterflies.
• Bramble is another valuable nectar source, much favoured by meadow brown and gatekeeper butterflies, among others. Both insects, birds and small mammals feed on the berries.
• Use an open fronted nest-box behind a climbing plant to attract nesting robins.
• If you use nest boxes for birds place them carefully and never on a south facing wall or fence in full sun.
• Consider using two or more blue tit nest boxes: leave the old nest in one of the boxes to attract nesting bumblebees.
• Place a log pile at the foot of a fence or wall, behind a bush, as a cool shady spot for amphibians and for hibernating insects such as ladybirds.
• Logs should be partly buried in the ground and placed upright if possible in order to accelerate decay: and therefore their usefulness to invertebrates.
• Ivy may act to protect the walls of your house rather than damage them. It will only penetrate mortar that is already crumbling.
• Of the many species of exotic climbers, the berries of pyracantha are attractive to birds like the blackcap.
• Consider also annual climbers like runner beans, which are very attractive to bumble bees and nasturtiums which may divert small white and large white butterflies from your brassicas!

Selected publications

Baines, C. & Smart, J. (1991) A Guide to Habitat Creation, Packard Publishing Ltd

Du Feu, C. (2nd ed. 1993) Nestboxes, BTO Guide No. 23. British Trust for Ornithology

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