Help wildlife in your garden this winter, with The Natural Gardener’s guide.
It is estimated that there are over 15,000,000 gardens in the UK, can you just imagine how much we can contribute to wildlife (or destroy it!)
Us gardeners can transform the environment, can really help those bees and other pollinators so, so easily.
How? With wildlife havens.
Cost? An odd pallet, a few piled logs, a couple of sandbags, a natural patch – BIG money!
(The photo shows a real luxury hotel, but could give you a few ideas – although a couple of logs mouldering away could be Shangri La for a lot of beasties !)
We can just stick on another jumper or, to be honest, turn up the heating when the weather becomes really cold.
Beneficial insects and animals chilling out the winter months can’t, and many will not make it whatever we do.
But it’s so simple to offer a ‘home’, a haven, to at least help them survive. Survive and get busy in the Spring and Summer pollinating your garden ( or getting stuck into your slugs and aphids !)
Bumblebees ( hibernating bees are always potential ‘Queens’) hedgehogs, butterflies*, toads, ladybirds …. just so many of beneficial animals which you will really appreciate in your garden.
So it’s definitely in your interest to make sure they do wake up!
Curb all that enthusiasm to cut back and make ‘tidy’ as well, what’s scruffy to you is a well-ordered garden city to them.
(And don’t forget to moan at your council next year – we don’t want those verges cut!)
* Some of our favourite butterflies overwinter as adults: Peacocks, Tortoiseshells, Red Admirals and Brimstones for example, but many others try to hang in there as eggs, or even caterpillars.
