Preparing for Spring - February  February is a month full of the promise of spring – the shoots of bulbs pushing through the soil, song thrushes singing from treetops and even great tits checking out nest boxes.  If you are fortunate snowdrops, winter aconites and crocuses will be blooming in your garden.  But weather-wise February certainly does not feel much like spring.  It may bring the coldest conditions of the winter, and there have been times over the last few years when this most fickle month has fooled us with mild temperatures.  Read more.... 

Create a Mini-Woodland - January  Creating dedicated small wildlife areas in a garden, or at least giving a passing nod to the idea of so called ‘mini-habitats’ for wildlife, has always been one of the keys to encouraging a range of creatures to our gardens.  Couple this with ensuring that the whole area is wildlife friendly and managed organically wherever possible and you could be well on the well to making the perfect wildlife garden.  However the concept of creating a woodland habitat is a rather an intimidating prospect for most of us.  Read more....

Growing Berries for Birds - December   Gardeners have appreciated the value of encouraging birds to their plots probably since gardening began.  We only have to watch as a robin repeatedly visits newly turned ground, or spend a little time observing a small flock of blue and great tits foraging amongst to our roses, to appreciate the huge numbers of invertebrates that these birds take, reducing, or even eliminating, the need for some other form of pest control.  Add to these benefits the pleasure of getting to know your local birds.    Read more.....

Winter Homes for Insects - November   As winter approaches do you look forward to the first glimpse of a brimstone butterfly or anticipate the friendly drone of a queen bumblebee in the spring?  If you do, and who doesn’t, then this is the time to make sure that the insects and other invertebrates that have chosen to reside in your garden have somewhere safe to spend the winter.  Many of the smaller garden creepy crawlies don’t make it through the colder weather, indeed many invertebrates have life cycles that  not designed to see another spring.    Read more.....

Gardening for Bumblebees - October  If bumblebees hadn’t been invented I have no doubt there would now be a mythical version – the cute and cuddly equivalent of a dragon or the fairies that as children we imagined were at the bottom of our gardens.  What could be nicer than a round, furry flying creature with a gentle droning buzz, a striped coat and a docile nature?  Perhaps we would omit the sting (and anyone who has been stung by a bumblebee will know that it is every bit as painful as a honeybee’s) but the bumblebee for me is the perfect insect.   Read more.....

Plant a Native Cornfield - September  The end of the summer is a time when we reap the rewards of all our hard work in the garden through the last few months.  Late summer borders should be spilling over with colourful plants now and the vegetable harvest hard to keep up with.  However if you have a moment to spare over the next few weeks this a good time to plan ahead to next year, especially if your garden is in need of a real injection of colour.  Try sowing an area of cornfield annuals now to brighten an empty spot next spring and summer.     Read more......

Helping Your Summer Butterflies - August  Hopefully since March or April there have been butterflies in your garden, flitting between your flowers, feeding on the nectar on offer and providing you with a great deal of interest.  Last summer has been widely reported as a poor one for butterflies and that’s not at all surprising.  The extremely wet weather we experienced last year will have made life difficult for all stages of the butterfly’s life cycle but especially the larval and pupal stages. Caterpillars do not like wet conditions and are prone to fungal diseases    Read more.....

Dragonflies and Damselflies - July   Although gardening for wildlife is now most definitely a mainstream activity and what was once seen as a rather quirky pastime is now a regular feature in almost all gardening magazines and television programmes, there is still a tendency for many of us to concentrate on those creatures that we see as either beneficial to the gardener or those that are regarded as beautiful – butterflies, blue tits or song thrushes.  Many gardeners are still very selective about the creatures they find in their plot and that’s fine    Read more.....

Mammals in your Garden - June     Are the mammals in your garden a pest or a delight?  You may be overrun with urban foxes, or perhaps you only see the occasional bat?  Whether you enjoy the mammals that visit your garden, or would prefer to keep them out, there is no doubt that wherever you live there will be mice, voles and shrews, hedgehogs and squirrels, maybe even deer or badgers visiting you.  We are less familiar with the mammals than other sorts of wildlife that live in or visit our gardens, because mammals are secretive and mainly nocturnal    Read more.......

Migrant Spring Butterflies - May   May is wonderful month in the garden – full of the promise of summer but still with the green lushness of spring.  In the countryside and the wildlife garden, the breeding activity of birds and small mammals may be coming to an end but many of our butterfly species are still in the throws of mating and laying eggs.  May is an intermediate month for butterflies with both spring and summer species around.   If your garden is butterfly friendly you could see a good variety this month including the  orange tip and brimstone.    Read more......

Encouraging Solitary Bees to your Garden - April     In these days of increasing awareness of the benefits of organic gardening and farming, biological control is big business.  Introducing beneficial insects into our gardens or greenhouses is now a fairly normal approach to pest control or pollination, and in certain situations can be a very effective way of dealing with unwanted insects such as whitefly, or aiding the setting of tomatoes. But however useful this scientific approach, many gardeners would still prefer to encourage useful creatures using natural methods.  Read more......

Feed your Wildlife  -  March      Throughout the depths of winter the importance of the three crucial elements of wildlife gardening – food, water and shelter - have come into their own.  A sheltered garden is a warm garden (within reason) and I’m sure that anyone who has moved from suburbia to the windswept wilds of the countryside as I have (or vice versa as our Editor will no doubt testify!) knows the value of shelter.  Water also is vital to wildlife and the small barrel pond outside my window is constantly visited by blue tits, wrens and dunnocks    Read more.....,

Ponds for Wildlife - February     If someone told you that there was a wonderfully easy way to increase the amount of wildlife in your garden by a very large percentage, both in terms of quantity and the number of different species you would see, you would probably be very keen to find out all about it.  Not only would this one simple change bring birds and mammals you hadn’t seen before to your garden, but many new creatures could be tempted to set up home and breed there also.  Sounds interesting?    Read more......

© Text and photographs Jenny Steel 2012