Helping Wildlife in Your Garden This Autumn
There's a temptation at this time of year to tidy everything away.
Sweep the leaves. Cut everything back. Clear the beds. Stack the pots. Make the garden look neat before winter arrives.
But while we're getting our homes ready for colder days, some much smaller neighbours are looking for winter accommodation too.
And one of the nicest things you can do for them this autumn is actually very little.
Don't tidy quite so much. A pile of leaves, an old log or a forgotten corner of the garden might not look particularly important to us. To something much smaller, it could be home.
Make a Little Wildlife Corner
Choose a quiet corner of the garden that you can largely leave alone.
It doesn't need to be large.
Add a few logs or pieces of dead wood. Allow fallen leaves to gather. Leave some old plant stems standing rather than cutting everything back.
Then tell everyone in the family: We're not tidying this bit.
Children could even make a little sign:
PLEASE DON'T TIDY
SOMEBODY MIGHT LIVE HERE
Make Room for Hedgehogs
Hedgehogs need somewhere protected to shelter, particularly as temperatures fall. Leaf piles, log piles and quiet areas of the garden can all help provide cover. If you have fences between gardens, suitable ground-level access can also help hedgehogs move between feeding and nesting areas rather than becoming trapped in one garden. Most importantly, if you discover a hedgehog sleeping or nesting, leave it undisturbed.
If you want to watch a lovely program all about hedgehogs and our gardens watch the Secret Garden Series on BBC Iplayer
Don't Forget Frogs & Toads
You don't need a pond to make your garden useful to amphibians. Frogs and toads look for cool, damp, protected spaces and can shelter beneath logs, stones, vegetation and other undisturbed corners.
So before moving that old pot or lifting a log that's been sitting somewhere for months, have a little look first, someone may already be underneath.
Leave Something for the Insects
The dead-looking bits of the autumn garden aren't necessarily dead at all. Hollow plant stems, seed heads, dead wood and leaf litter can provide valuable shelter for insects during colder weather.
Some butterflies and moths also spend winter hidden away in different stages of their life cycle. Cutting everything down and clearing it away can remove those hiding places. So leave a few stems standing.
The garden doesn't need to be immaculate.
Look Out for Ladybirds
Ladybirds often gather together to overwinter somewhere dry and protected. You might discover them in sheds, amongst leaves, in cracks or tucked into sheltered corners. If you find a sleepy gathering, the best thing you can usually do is leave them alone.
It's also a rather lovely thing to show children, proof that even the tiniest creatures have their own ways of preparing for winter.
Feed the Birds But Keep Things Clean
As natural food becomes less abundant, garden feeders can provide an additional food source for birds. Keep feeders and bird baths clean, provide fresh water and watch who comes to visit. Give children a notebook or camera and start a simple garden bird diary.
- Which species arrive?
- What time?
- What are they eating?
- Do the same birds come back each day?
- Suddenly looking out of the kitchen window becomes a tiny nature study.
Before You Tidy, Look
This might be the most important rule of all. Before sweeping a pile of leaves, moving logs, lifting old pots or clearing an undisturbed corner:
look first.
Turn gardening into a treasure hunt rather than a clearing exercise.
Ask children:
- Who might live here?
- What could hide underneath this?
- Should we leave this bit alone?
- It's a wonderfully simple way of teaching them that our outside spaces aren't solely ours.
Make It a Weekend Project
Give everyone a job.
THE FUTURE ARCHITECT
Makes the log and leaf pile.
THE WILD CHILD
Checks carefully for existing inhabitants.
THE OBSERVER
Keeps an eye on the wildlife corner over the coming weeks, documents anything interesting you discover.
No complicated kit required, no perfect result expected, and once it's finished, the most important instruction is wonderfully easy:
Leave it alone.
A Garden Doesn't Have to Be Perfect
Perhaps that's the nicest lesson in all of this, a garden doesn't always have to be perfectly clipped, swept and controlled to be beautiful. Sometimes the pile of leaves you've been meaning to clear is doing something useful, sometimes the old stems are protecting something you can't see, and sometimes making space for nature simply means allowing a small part of our world to be a little bit wild.
So this weekend, find a corner and leave it for someone small.
Well thats my excuse
Looking for more little ways to enjoy the season together? Read The October List: 10 Lovely Things to Do With Children This October →
