Design your wildlife-friendly garden

Gardening with wildlife, woman looking at flowers

WildNet - Tom Marshall

Design your wildlife-friendly garden

Get creative with your space

If your garden is wildlife-friendly or you are following any of these actions - why not apply for our 'Wildlife- friendly Garden Award'?

Find out more

What to avoid in your garden

Avoid pesticides & slug pellets

The creatures we thing of as pests are often a valuable food source for other wildlife. While raising it’s chicks in spring a blue tit will need to find thousands of caterpillars, larvae and aphids, many of them garden ‘pests’. Aphids, or greenfly, are the main food of the larvae of hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds. Slugs are fed on by ground beetles, centipedes, frogs, toads and hedgehogs. In a wildlife garden with a wide range of predator species the populations so-called pest species rarely increase so they become a problem.

If slugs or aphids become a problem there are non-chemical means of control, such a pinching off the tips of broad beans infested with blackfly, or using barriers against slugs.

Avoid chemical weed-killers

Chemical weed-killers are poisons, and may be toxic to more than just the target plant. If carelessly applied they can kill nearby ornamental plants. Weed-killers are also toxic to animals, including humans. In many cases we do not know the full effects, but they may lead to long-term harm to human health as well as to wildlife.

There are many other ways to control plants growing where we don’t want them, such as regular hoeing, hand weeding, growing ground-cover plants and use of mulches.

In these challenging times our work will still continue to defend local wildlife

We can’t do this without your support so please donate what you can.
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