How To Attract Wildlife Into Your Garden

With fewer natural habitats for wildlife in the UK every year, one of the best ways you can help is to turn your garden into a haven where they can find sources of food, water and safe shelter. Not only will our wildlife benefit, but you’ll benefit too! Simply hearing birds in our garden, seeing hedgehogs visiting or bees buzzing from bloom to bloom will help to create a relaxing place where we can relax and leave the stresses associated with our busy lives behind.

Not only do we benefit in this way, but for keen gardeners it’s also the perfect way to recruit a year-round maintenance crew who will naturally help with pest control, fertilisation, and soil structure.

Here are just a few ideas to help you get started and succeed with ease.

How To Attract Wild Birds Into Your Garden

When you think about attracting wild birds into your garden you might be thinking about the lovely sounds and activity they will bring, but canny gardeners will also know that your plants will benefit from these so called’ natural gardeners’ as they not only act as natural pest wardens, helping to manage many destructive pests such as caterpillars, snails and slugs, they can also help with soil aeration as they forage on the ground and add nutrients back into the soil with their bird droppings rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. With this in mind, let's consider some of the easy ways in which you can encourage them into your garden.

First let’s think about food and water. Ideally when it comes to food a combination of high-energy bird food in feeders, food which you can ground feed and natural sources of food, such as shrubs or trees which produce berries. Different wild birds will favour different foodstuffs so ideally provide a selection and make sure you place it in clean, well placed, bird feeders so that they can feed safely whilst benefitting from seed high in fat such as sunflower hearts, peanut nibbles or suet balls.

Whilst food is vital to entice birds into your garden, so is a fresh supply of water. Most bird food which you put out into your garden is dry, so it’s important that they have water available to stay hydrated. In addition, birds use water to keep their plumage clean so they need somewhere they can bathe. When offering water in your garden for wild birds, it’s important to refresh it daily so it stays disease-free and is available on even the hottest day. Also select a bird bath which is safe for birds to stand in - so a bird bath from 2.5cm up to 10cm deep is ideal. Also position the bath in a safe, quiet spot of your garden, ideally in partial shade and in an open space so predators can't hide, which means between 2 to 3 metres away from shrubs and low branches.

Finally, think about providing birds with somewhere to shelter and nest. Whilst few of us will have hedges where birds can naturally shelter or build nests, you can quickly and easily create a secure location by introducing a bird box into your garden. You’ll need to position the box at least two to three metres off the ground so it's safe from cats and rodents and ideally placed so its facing north and east so it will be protected from the wettest winds and the strongest sun. With lots of different types of bird boxes available, all designed to suit different birds, pay attention to which birds are normally busy in your garden and select a suitable type. For example, for wrens and robins you need an open fronted nest box, whilst for small tits and sparrows you need one with a small entrance hole in the front.

How To Attract Beneficial Insects Into Your Garden

Beneficial insects such as ladybirds, bees and butterflies, as well as many others, simply form an army of allies for you as a gardener, as they go about their daily lives, they actually become a natural, year-round maintenance team. Many work as pollinators, moving from flower to flower so that you get fruit and seeds, whilst others help in the soil, helping to break down decaying foliage to increase nutrients in the soil. Most help by killing or consuming huge amounts of destructive garden pests such as aphids, thrips, caterpillars, spider mites, etc., which can cause mayhem in your garden beds and borders.

To encourage these tiny workers into your garden, there are a range of simple things you can do throughout the year to help turn your garden into a haven for these insects. What your aim should be is to provide food, water and shelter so that they will be happy to spend their days in your garden rather than someone else's. Let's think about food first.

When it comes to food, it’s a case of including some nectar-rich plants within your garden so that insects will have an easily accessible, abundant amount of nectar from which they can take their fill, day after day. Ideally, plant a mix of plants so that there are different-shaped blooms, including flat-topped clusters like Achillea, together with daisy-shaped blooms like those of Cosmos and Calendula. Also include some smaller flowers like Sweet Alyssum for tiny insects and trumpet-shaped flowers like foxgloves, which bees like to crawl inside.

For hydration a small pond or water feature is ideal, but even simply a shallow dish filled with pebbles and topped up with fresh water will create a safe water station. Position this close to your nectar rich plants and make sure to refresh it daily to prevent bacteria or mosquitoes.

Finally, shelter, and here is where you have lots of choices. If you already have a compost heap then this should be providing shelter for ground beetles, centipedes, earwigs and many other beneficial bugs. Whilst creating a pile of logs, sticks and bark would be a great DIY way to provide a protective habitat similar to what they would naturally find in woodland, where they can hide from predators as well as hibernate during the winter. If you want a quick and easy way to provide shelter, then you could add an insect hotel.

These premade ‘hotels’ have been specially designed so that they will provide shelter for a wide range of beneficial insects that are visiting your garden. Ideally, position this in a sunny location, sheltered from wind and close to your flowers so that it’s within easy reach. Also, make sure it’s off the ground, so at least 50cm high or more, fixed to a garden fence, wall or post, so that it is safe from pests as well as possible dampness.

How To Attract Hedgehogs Into Your Garden

Often called ‘the gardener’s friend’, hedgehogs are simply incredible pest controllers, helping to keep the populations of bugs and beasties in your garden in check with their diet of beetles, caterpillars, worms and other invertebrates. This means it’s important that you encourage them into your garden, and the first thing that involves is giving them access.

With most gardens now enclosed by fences you need to be able to create an easy way for them to get in and out of your garden safely and that’s done by creating a ‘doorway’ in your garden fence. Ideally you need to cut a hole 13cm x 13cm at the bottom of your fence, selecting a quiet area of your garden where hedgehogs can enter and exit undisturbed. We’ve made this easy for you with our steel guide and cutting template. 

Once you have a hedgehog being able to visit your garden, you need to encourage it to do so by making food and water available. Whilst you want them to feed on the bugs in your garden, you should also provide a quick source of nourishment, so you can either buy hedgehog food or place out chicken or turkey flavoured cat or dog food together with a shallow bowl of fresh water. You can protect their food and water from other visitors to your garden, such as cats, by covering the area with a plastic storage box and cutting an entry point large enough for a hedgehog but too small for a cat.

You should also think about growing plants in your garden, which will entice the insects that hedgehogs like to eat. If you’re not sure what to grow, then Seedball has a specially curated tin which includes twenty seed balls containing seeds for a mix of wildflowers which will do exactly that.

How To Attract Bats Into Your Garden

One of the easiest ways to make your garden welcoming to bats is to install a bat box, which bats will use from summer through to autumn and may even hibernate in it through winter. When selecting the best spot to site a bat box you need to consider height, light, shelter and location. Your bat box needs to be fixed between three to six metres of the ground so the bats are safe from predators such as cats. When positioning the box make sure it's not close to any lights on your house or in your garden as bats need darkness to feel safe and wouldn’t roost in a box where artificial light would disturb it. Find a sheltered location but also one which leaves a clear, unobstructed path so bats can easily enter and exit it. Finally, get out your compass, as for warmth it should be positioned facing south or so

When thinking about how your garden can provide food for bats you need to concentrate on night-scented flowers as these will attract the insects which bats love to hunt at night. So a gorgeous climbing plant like honeysuckle would be ideal, as it releases a strong fragrance from its flowers from dusk and through the night which acts as a magnet for moths and other nocturnal insects. Also remember that light-coloured blooms will be more visible for insects at night so think about growing perennials like Michaelmas Daisies with either white, pink or purple blooms which are great for attracting moths in late summer as their clustered heads provide a concentrated source of nectar.

Similar to when you are encouraging other wildlife into your garden, including a pond or water feature will help them to choose your garden as they need a place to drink. However, having a small pond or water feature would also help to attract midges, another food source for bats.

Whilst you are helping bats out by turning your garden into a safe place where they can find shelter, food and water, in return they also help you out by being highly efficient, natural pest controllers. Bats can consume hundreds of tiny insects every night, including beetles, moths and midges which could all feed on the foliage, flowers and even roots of your plants causing damage and stunting growth.

We hope this post has provided you with the inspiration to encourage wildlife into your garden and some useful ways to do this for some of these helpful garden visitors, which will work to keep your plants healthy simply by providing them with food, water and shelter. If you’d like to hear more ways to encourage wildlife into your garden, please let us know. Or if you have your own advice to pass on, we would love to hear that too!