Biodiversity - what will you be doing?

[Greenfingeredsarah]

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity - what will you be doing to encourage wildlife into your garden?

Yo mean the slugs, snails, caterpillars, rabbits, mice and pigeons?

Don't get me started.

Okay, I do usually plant old-fashioned sweet peas near my beans. Does that count?

yes that counts!

Do you have a compost bin? that would be a really good way reduce landfill.

I'm going to be making a conscious effort to catch rain water this year

I'm thinking about a dwarf buddleia at the moment - I've always thought it would be nice to have one, but my parents one is totally out of control, and the reality is that I won't remember to prune it properly. But apparently you can now get small ones, so I think I'll probably get one, or two...

We made a small pond last year, and already its attracting frogs, and has 2 types of snail (ramshorns we introduced, the little whelk-shaped ones have appeared unaided); when I cleaned it out I also found a few of what I believe to be dragonfly nymphs. If your DCs are old enough to be trusted near water, do consider a little pond if you can. Even a half-barrel is worth doing if you don't have room or inclination for anything larger.

We encourage birds - the dog helps keep cats away. Apart from the regular seed (which also feeds mice/voles beneath the table) we got a nyjer feeder which attracted goldfinches by the next day.

We have compost, buddleia, sedums... I really ought to leave more nettles .
And we have 'logpiles' (ie bits of wood too big for the green bin which DH can't be bothered taking to the dump) lurking at the back of the borders, hopefully providing habitat/food for something.

The one form of wildlife we don't want is moles!

We have two water butts < preen >

But no compost system, still. DH has a zillion home jobs this year and used the builders pallets he'd put by for the compost structure to make a raised bed last weekend. Hopefully before autumn.....

Lots of ivy and nettles here, esp at the bottom of the garden. We have slowworms here .

We also have a sunken garden that is in much need of a revamp. Over the next few years we plan on flooding the whole thing with water and making it more contemporary. Will need to read up on the whole wildlife/water thing this year.

I'd really like to get a contemporary bird feeder. Does anyone have one thats attractive to humans and birds? Don't like the twee houses, saw one a while ago that was a globe type see through thing, but can't remember where.

Need to keep the pesky rabbits that live in the field at the bottom of the garden away from my veg though.

We have a few buddleia, purpley ones, the bees love the sedum and the echinops but my favourite thing is to sit on the lawn with the DC watching the bees fly into the foxglove trumpets, flying out all woozy with pollen covered toes. Ah, summer......

Wow GrimmaTheNome, that's a very impressive green garden. It's such a hot topic these days, I thought it would be good to start a thread about it. Even just a few small changes can make a huge amount of difference. I'm working on helping my DS' school make an Eco garden and we're starting with a Bee Hotel.

We've got a lovely little Robin that lives in our garden.
I agree re the moles but how can you stop them coming?

slow-worms!
rspb has loads of bird feeders.

ooh thanks Grimma, a few on there I like.

Was very funny when we moved here 5 years ago. DH came in from the garden looking very, very pale and shaking. He thought they were adders, twit.

I like rebranding benign neglect as eco-awareness

I forgot to say in the last post, now is a good time for putting up bird boxes. Go for a design proven to be popular with birds; the simple wooden sort with appropriate sized hole or open fronted for robins are probably best.

Just found A-Z of wildlife gardening at the RSPB site - tons of useful stuff there.

I will be killing as many rats as possible.

While I agree biodiversity is a good thing - there is sometimes too much of a good thing.

We have a lot of songbirds which we encourage with nesting boxes.

If I remember rightly, the research at the University of Sheffield showed that you don't need to do much at all to have biodiversity in the garden - published as 'no nettles required', which just about summed up their message!

you're totally right, it's the small changes that make the difference. There are loads of great ideas here, which you may find useful. Sarah

We have a compost bin, a water butt, bird feeders and a nestbox.

We also have an area at the bottom of the garden which is left deliberately "wild" with long grass, weeds, log piles etc. (Some might call this messy, I call it biodiversity )

Sowing a meadow, plug planting our house grass roof with cowslips and putting up an owl box.

I've been reading about this a lot lately, so felt inspired and went out and put up two bird boxes though DH had to put them up as I couldn't reach high enough . Want to buy a big bird bath for the centre of the lawn too. Liz

Wow you all certainly have been doing your bit to encourage wildlife into your gardens. We've put up a new bird feeder and we'll be getting a bird bath as well in the next few weeks. Keep it up everyone! Sarah

Greenfingeredsarah.. I have been an organic gardener for quite some time now. Could you could help me (i know this doesn't sound too green) but I wonder if you know about the type of plastic that you put down to let in the rain but not the weeds.

It's just for a tiny part of our front garden that's outside our gates under our postbox ( we have our 2nd home in rural France) and the neighbours often comment on it!!

ppeatfruit - we use this or similar. You can get it from most garden centres.

Thank you isthatporridge...

dd wants to let her bit of garden to go 'completely natural' I'm trying to encourage her to a slightly more managed way, so that she doesnt end up with grass, brambles and ivy which is what it will revert to.

could encourage her to make little log pile perhaps.

We have a 'meadow' (its a bit of the lawn I only cut once a year in the autumn!). And second the putting woody bits down at the back of the borders - also put the hard perenial stalks that don't rot down quick enough in the compost there and they eventually disintegrate (or put them on the lawn and 'mow' them up into the lawn clippings so they do rot down in the compost heap). We also have a bog garden as it was the only way of installing any drainage into the lawn which was otherwise a lake. Planting trees is good - even if just small.

BUddlia's are easy to prune though - they take cutting back very well - I normally wait until shoots are starting and then take most branches down to about 1/2 of their length, ideally to just above a bud - but if not, cut it off anyway and it will probably sprout!

Have a look at this page, there are some great ideas about how you can make your garden greener but also ways in which you can involved the DC. Sarah