A Wildlife Garden Should Only Contain Wildflowers
If you want a wildlife garden you should only grow wildflowers. These are not my words or my belief but something quoted in conversation to me this week. It is a fair enough view I suppose although incorrect. Where do you start when answering this argument?
I suppose the first point is where do the plants in our gardens originate? The species originated in wild from seed sown by Mother Nature and many have entered our gardens as nature intended while others have been “improved” by plant breeders. Some improvements have resulted in larger flowers or longer flowering periods but at the cost of loss of perfume or no longer being capable of producing the food source intended for companion insects or birds. I may be in danger of sounding like Charles Darwin when saying that plants, insects, birds and animals have adapted over millions of years to live together and provide mutual benefits. If there is a problem with our modern wildlife gardens it is that our gardens include trees, shrubs and plants that have been imported from other continents and have adapted along with their homeland wildlife.
Of course this introduction of flora is not new. Many species we think of as British natives were brought over by invaders, sailing ships seeking new continents and the modern day plant hunters. If it were not for these intrepid adventurers our garden would not be as colourful or diverse. So what has changed? Transport, the world has become smaller. Imagine being a plant hunter finding a new species and having to find a way to keep seed viable, a plant or cutting alive for two or three years as your ship found its way home. Nowadays once back to base the collection can be home in a matter of hours. In addition so many plants are bred abroad and imported by the thousand.
Do you have to let your garden run wild to be a wildlife friendly garden? No but a garden can be too tidy, so tidy in fact that it looks and probably is sterile. I can remember the bad old days when we were encouraged to spray chemicals as soon as the first aphids or other pests appeared. In fact with some treatments we were told to spray before they appeared. Believe it or not I saw a neighbour digging up a perfectly healthy plant that was in full bloom and looked beautiful. When I enquired as to the problem the reply was that that it was covered in bees and he could not stand insects of any kind. A sad but true story.
We are advised where possible to grow a small patch of stinging nettles in a corner of the garden as they are the staple diet of certain caterpillars. In a small garden it has to be recognised that this is not always practical, especially where young children play. But does this mean you do not have a wildlife garden? Absolutely not, this is only one part of the ideal. I am lucky that I have a field backing into my garden and in one corner I do have a nettle patch – the other side of the hedge. Am I cheating? No, they do grow into the hedge so I do have to be careful that they become too invasive but if I was a very tidy gardener I would find a way to kill off the lot.
Last year gale force winds blew down a few branches from a Hawthorne tree. They have not been wasted and in fact some of the smaller diameter parts are stacked in a corner for insects and hedgehogs.
If you are interested in attracting bees, butterflies and other insects into your garden there are specialist websites that will advise the best species and varieties to grow. But don’t go away with the impression that the required plants will be expensive to acquire. A good example is the native foxglove, readily available, will seed themselves without becoming invasive and the bumblebees love them. It is a pleasure to sit by a foxglove in summer and see a bumblebee disappear into a foxglove and then come backing out with pollen sacks full. A word of caution however, foxgloves are poisonous so care should be taken if you have a young family but this also applies to many other plants.
Wildflowers are all weeds. There are those who look upon wildflowers sown in their gardens by the wind or the birds as weeds. If you define a weed as a plant growing in the wrong place I bet there are not many of us who do not have a weed growing in our garden. There are certain “weeds” that come up in my garden each year and I leave them. They may have small flowers but are exquisite in their own right and are usually easy to pull up if in the wrong place. Pernicious and invasive weeds are another matter.
Water is a medium that we are encouraged to have in our wildlife garden. Not all of us can have water in the garden especially if we have young children but even a small bird bath can be very beneficial. Site the bird bath close to safe cover so that a well bathed and heavy laden bird can easily make it into cover to preen. A wildlife garden pond does not have to be huge; a friend of mine has a very small pool with cover planted on the edge that has frogs and tadpoles every year.
To finish here is a story from this last week. A gardening friend went out into his garden to turn his compost heap and was going well until he came across something he did not expect, a field mouse nest with very small young. Did he think that it was only a mouse nest, maybe a pest that needed to be removed? No he carefully covered the nest with compost in the hope that the parents would return to look after their young. Now this is what I would call a wildlife gardener.
Creating a wildlife garden can be fun and very rewarding. Design and tend for your garden with garden wildlife in mind and you will attract wildlife that will make your garden come alive and be a more enjoyable place.