How to make a garden wildlife friendly?

[EmpressJewel]

I live in a Greater London terrace and would like some quick and easy ideas to make the garden more friendly to wildlife.

Our children play in the garden, so whatever we do needs to be child friendly and not take up too much space. The garden is about 70ft long and quite narrow. Mainly lawn, with patios, two wooden fences on either side and a solid wall at the back, which could be used. The neighbours huge leylandii tree overhangs into our garden and I think has lots of birds in it.

It's south west facing, so lots of sun, but also shade.

We have had robins, magpies, wood pigeons, squirrels and the odd fox in our garden.

Any ideas would be appreciated

Look for plants that have scent and open flowers with a single row of petals. Bees and other insects find them easier to get nectar from.
Insects seem to prefer flowers in the purple and white range of colours.
In the shady corner build an insect hotel, from old stacked up logs and bits of brick, this should attract wood lice and other bugs.
The RSPB has a good web page with instructions.

The more you do to the garden the more you interfere with wildlife, so don't keep it too tidy.
Open native species of flower.
Dont kill insects. Even slugs and wasps are important for the ecosystem, they eat other bugs.No weedkiller.
Avoid plastic, especially plastic garden string.
Collect rainwater for watering purposes.
Put up bird boxes. If you put out bird food, no peanuts, fledgelings choke on peanuts.

I meant to add, put in a water feature, if you can. An old babies bath sunk into the ground would do. Soften the edge with rocks and planting and put a water plant in it.
You’ll then find that water insects such as water boatmen and hopefully frogs or toads colonise it.
Also birds will come and drink from it.

Can you have an untidy, more wild bit at the bottom? Maybe put in some native plants for the bees and leave plenty of foliage and undergrowth for animals and insects. A pile of old logs for beetles is good too. You can have a managed wilderness ie you don’t have to let it become a tangle of brambles, but plant herbaceous perennials and in autumn/winter let them die down naturally so there is plenty of cover for wildlife. Birds love shrubs for cover too- they particularly love my sambucus nigra, both to perch in and for the berries.

When I had a garden in London I was amazed at how varied the insect life was, much more so than my mums semi rural garden. Maybe because of being further away from farms, or the proximity of a nearby park with a large area of woodland. Either way, it was great! Gardens are so important in supporting wildlife.

If you have a water feature, please make sure it has a slope or shallow edge, at least to one side, so if any creatures fall in, they can climb out again.

Even if you don't have a pond, a large shallow dish of water, eg a big plant pot saucer, can be invaluable for birds and animals needing a drink/ bath. It will get a bit scummy, and the moment you have scrubbed it out and filled it with lovely clean water, an entire flock of starlings will come and have a bath [voice of bitter experience].

If you have bird feeders, please make sure any sunflower seeds and peanuts aren't left on the ground overnight. If you're lucky enough to have local hedgehogs, eating peanuts and sunflower seeds (and mealworms) can give them bone disease.

Are your fences bare? Green corridors are very useful for wildlife so you could look to cover them in climbers - a mix of evergreen and deciduous is good. Avoid ivy and virginia creeper as they take over (yours and your neighbours' gardens). I enthusiastically grew ivy (good for wildlife) but I'm struggling to remove it now that my other climbers have filled in

Buddleia.

I have pyracantha (prickly - make the kids aware!), passionflower, ceonothus, star jasmine, honeysuckle and clematis (evergreen and annual) covering my sunny fences. Climbing hydrangea, clematis armandii and a shade-loving rose on my shady fence.

English lavender, scabious and erysimum Bowles mauve are a hit with insects and bees in my garden. Bluebells and lungwort are great for early nectar when not much else is in flower.

Nasturtiums (easy to germinate for kids), sunflowers, fuchsias and snapdragon are all popular with insects and bees over the summer months.

Hope that helps!

Thank you all, lots of great ideas.

Don't 'tidy' under the hedges or by the fences because the hedgehogs\frogs etc. need to have cover to visit your water feature or food, ours love to finish up the catfood that we put out for our strays, we put out extra for them too.

I planted geraniums (the perennial type) and I'm so pleased to see the bees taking nectar from them (they don't have the flat flowers though). Some insects are happy to use the funnel shaped flowers.

Someone said on here in an old thread that rhododendrons (and azaleas?) are poisonous to bees, so advised against them. But then in the BBC's Great British Garden Revival on rhododendrons, I think James Wong said that only one or a very few species of rhododendron are poisonous and result in toxic honey being made by bees...