Backyard Biodiversity: Creating a Wildlife-Friendly Garden

Your backyard is a personal space that allows you to unwind and have a peaceful retreat away from the rest of the world. Creating a biodiverse garden that provides food, water and shelter for wildlife will give you a great outdoor area that has plenty of living things that can help to boost the natural environment feel of the garden. This type of garden can be cultivated by planting native trees, adding ponds or building specialized habitats.

Having a wildlife-friendly garden can be great for your wellbeing and promote a healthier lifestyle, as you create a stress-free environment. This guide will help you with creating a biodiverse backyard with ease with some tips and tricks that can promote wildlife to enter your garden. Continue reading to find out more about creating an eco-friendly garden for wildlife to explore.

Provide Food and Water

Plant for All Seasons

When you’re making your backyard more biodiverse, you can choose a variety of trees and plants that can produce fruit or seeds all year round. This will offer a consistent food source to all wildlife, making your garden feel more alive as you’re helping nature get nourishment. Oak trees support hundreds of insect species that provide food for birds and mammals. Acorns feed a variety of wildlife, including squirrels and jays.

Include Different Flowers

Growing sunflowers and coneflowers can ensure pollen and nectar are easily accessible to a wide range of local pollinators, as complicated double-petal varieties often render these resources unreachable. This accessible food source should be combined with a strong focus on native plants that have co-evolved with local insect populations, providing the specific nourishment for a large variety of wildlife.

Add Water Sources

Having a water source in your backyard can be life-saving for local wildlife. A bird bath can be easily converted into a drinking station by adding small stones or pebbles that break the surface tension and provide essential perching spots for wildlife. This design allows them to sip water safely without the risk of falling in and drowning, ensuring that birds have a place to drink and bathe. This gives essential hydration for all pollinators during hot weather.

Put Out Feeders

Actively supplementing food with feeders is crucial for supporting birds, especially when natural resources are scarce. Placing bird feeders filled with high-energy options like black-oil sunflower seeds can significantly boost the survival rate of local avian populations during colder months or prolonged periods of bad weather. Feeders can also provide protection from predators if placed properly. They can also prevent the spread of disease when cleaned thoroughly, making them a thoughtful commitment to wildlife support.

Garden Box with chives, rosemary and thyme - Photo @Happylittlefishes

Shelter and Habitats

Build Habitats

Building habitats for various types of wildlife that provide them with safe shelter and nesting locations. Creating a bug hotel from materials like hollow bamboo canes, drilled logs and straw provides nesting tunnels for bees and overwintering spots for ladybugs. It can give smaller wildlife a great place to hibernate, raise their young and seek protection from larger predators.

Use Nature for Cover

Taller vegetation provides year-round shelter from predators and harsh weather, acting as safe havens for birds and small mammals. You can create a mixed native hedge, which not only offers diverse berries and blossoms as food but also forms a corridor that allows wildlife to move safely between different parts of the garden.

Leave Wild Areas

Resist the urge to rake every fallen leaf and trim all the excess branches, as these can give wildlife a habitat for many native butterflies and other wildlife, who spend the cold months tucked beneath debris or hidden behind branches. Piles of logs can also act as thermal refuge, hibernation spots and nesting sites for ground-nesting creatures, effectively transforming your garden into a biodiverse habitat.

Add Artificial Homes

Add artificial homes such as bat houses and hedgehog houses in appropriate locations. A hedgehog house tucked into a quiet corner provides a safe place for hibernation and raising hoglets, offering support to a species currently in decline due to habitat fragmentation. For birds, different species prefer specific hole sizes and heights, so selecting or building a nesting box tailored to local species will be better.

Wildlife-Friendly Maintenance

Go Chemical-Free

A chemical-free approach is crucial for establishing a healthy and p9ollinator-friendly garden, as it avoids synthetic pesticides and herbicides. Choose natural gardening methods like hand-pulling weeds, applying thick mulch to suppress them, introducing natural predators. This ensures your garden remains a safe haven, allowing nature to maintain its own balance. Stihl tillers are great for giving you an eco-friendly solution to perfecting your biodiverse landscape.

Make Space for Movement

Leaving a gap of just four to five inches at the base of your fence allows nocturnal foragers like hedgehogs to easily travel between yards in search of food and mates. These tiny access points help connect fragmented habitats, giving them larger green space to operate in. This helps to support the mobility and genetic diversity of local wildlife populations, ensuring they can reach the resources they need.

About the Author:

"After completing a University degree in Journalism, Darcy Fowler has dedicated a lot of time to interior design, exterior design and home decor; completing multiple home design projects in the process. Darcy is determined to provide interesting and insightful content with the hope of inspiring others. She has a big ambition to establish herself in the world of home renovation and design journalism."

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