Consider the wildlife

from Wildlife Gardening for Everyone

I'd ask every gardener to consider conserving wildlife in their own gardens. But it's a very misunderstood topic. Plenty is written about the wildlife we can all see, the snuffling hedgehog, the spangled butterfly, the blue tit and his acrobatics at the bird table. And most gardeners are au fait with hedgehog houses, putting food out for the birds and having plenty of nectar plants for the butterflies and bees.

In its own way, this is important. However generally the well being of all these creatures is dependent on the lower orders of garden life. Track their food chains back and at the very bottom is either insect life (in some shape or form) or invertebrate life. And although the blue tit happily gobbles peanuts in winter, his fledglings will need a diet of grubs and small flies to thrive and breed. The hedgehog needs a high protein diet of slugs and earthworms. The thrush needs a thousand snails to bring up a nestful of three or four. So we have to nurture this aspect of life too and avoid adding toxins to the garden. A truly natural gardener should eschew insecticides and slug killers, thus avoiding the inevitable build up of toxins in bird and small animal life. This chemical-free zone will be healthier for you and your family too.

Preserving habitat is also highly desirable and one of the gardener's skills is beautifying these wilder areas. Leave some of your grass to move and sway in the wind, brown butterflies may lay eggs for you. Have a sunny bank with rough grass to help any nesting bumble bees to overwinter and breed. Stud it with Red campion or Cowslip. Leave leaf litter to float above your snowdrops and hellebores during winter - it's the equivalent of the insect duvet. In short, don't be too tidy.

Finally stop trying to subdivide nature into good and bad wildlife. One depends on the other. Your good and saintly ladybird needs lots of colonies of those evil aphids to survive. Don't pull the individual pieces out. Conserve the lot and stand back and enjoy your own living jigsaw!

Val Bourne is the author of the award-winning book "The Natural Gardener", published by Frances Lincoln