Encouraging Wildlife into a Small Town Garden

Small Spaces, Big Welcome

A modest town garden can be one of the richest habitats on the street. Even a courtyard, a paved yard or a balcony with a few pots has room for more life than most people imagine. You do not need a meadow, a pond or an orchard. Three or four deliberate additions — a shallow dish of water, a few native flowers, a pile of logs left undisturbed — will bring birds, bees, butterflies and, if you are lucky, a hedgehog through the fence within a season.

The trick is to think in layers and in seasons. Layered planting gives creatures somewhere to shelter at ground level, somewhere to feed in the middle, and somewhere to nest higher up. Seasonal thinking means making sure there is something useful in flower in March when the first queen bumblebees wake, and something still going in late October. Get those two things roughly right and the rest follows.

Water: The Simplest Thing You Can Add

If you do only one thing, add water. Birds need it for drinking and bathing all year round, bees and hoverflies drink from it in hot spells, and a shallow dish is far more useful than a deep, steep-sided one. Keep it no more than 4–5cm deep, with gently sloping sides or a pile of pebbles inside so that anything that falls in can climb back out.

• Site a bird bath or dish about a metre up, near a shrub or climber, so birds can check for cats before committing.
• Add a few flat stones that break the surface — bees will land on them to drink without drowning.
• Scrub and refill it every week or so; stagnant water breeds disease and mosquitoes.
• In winter, float a small ball on the surface to keep a patch of water open when the rest freezes.
• Give hedgehogs their own ground-level saucer tucked under a hedge or behind a border. A deep bowl with sheer sides is a drowning risk.

Plant Native, and Let Some Flowers Go Over

Double-flowered bedding plants look cheerful in a garden centre but offer insects almost nothing. Native and near-native flowers are far more generous, and most of them are easy, unfussy plants that cope with ordinary soil.

• Early spring: cowslip, primrose, lungwort and grape hyacinth feed bees just out of hibernation.
• High summer: foxglove, wild marjoram, lavender, catmint, yarrow and oxeye daisy are reliable, long-flowering and drought-tolerant.
• Late season: common ivy is one of the best plants in the country — its flowers open in September and October, exactly when bees are still foraging, and its berries feed birds in February.
• Easy fillers: pot marigold, borage and nasturtium will flower for months in a pot or a gap in the border.

Then resist the urge to tidy everything away. Leave seedheads standing through the winter — teasel, sunflower and honesty all hold their shape and feed goldfinches when little else is available. A border that looks slightly scruffy in November is a border doing its job.

A Log Pile, and a Corner You Leave Alone

Rotting wood is the unsung hero of a wildlife garden. A stack of logs in a damp, shaded corner becomes home to beetles, woodlice, fungi and the larvae that feed next year's birds.

• Stack logs with the bark still on, in mixed sizes, the bottom layer partly buried in soil so the wood stays damp.
• Leave a leaf pile behind a shed or under a hedge — hedgehogs and frogs both use it for winter shelter.
• Keep a compost heap going. It is a nursery for slow-worms and a larder for blackbirds.
• Avoid slug pellets and insecticides. They travel up the food chain and will undo much of the good work in a fortnight.

Hedges, Holes and Homes

Boundaries matter more than most gardeners realise. Solid fencing cuts a garden off from the creatures that would otherwise visit it. Cutting a 13cm square gap at ground level in the bottom of a fence creates a hedgehog highway between gardens — the single most effective thing you can do for them.

• If you have the space, plant a native hedge of hawthorn, blackthorn, beech or hornbeam; it offers nesting cover, berries and insect food in one.
• Cover a wall or fence with honeysuckle, jasmine or ivy for nesting birds and evening scent.
• Hang nest boxes facing north or east, out of the strongest sun and rain, two to four metres up. A 32mm entrance suits blue tits; 25mm suits coal tits.
• Do not cut hedges or trim climbers between March and August — check carefully first if you must.

Keeping It Going Through the Year

Wildlife gardening is less about a big project and more about a gentle routine. In early spring, hold off the big cut until late March so overwintering insects can emerge. In summer, leave one strip of lawn long and cut it just once in late summer, removing the clippings. In autumn, leave hollow stems standing — solitary bees will use them — and let fallen leaves stay where they land under shrubs. In winter, keep the water open, top up the feeders and resist the tidying instinct until the frosts have passed.

Start with the water dish. Add a pot of marjoram and a small log pile nearby. Within a few weeks you will notice the difference — the first blue tit at the bath, a bee working the flowers, a blackbird turning over the leaves. Small gardens, done thoughtfully, are not a poor substitute for the countryside. They are a genuine refuge in the middle of it all.