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Providing wildlife shelters in your garden

Creating spaces for wildlife to live and nest in is one way of making animals feel at home in your garden. Creating variety helps provide habitats for different animals. Insects in particular help keep your garden healthy – they pollinate plants, eat other insects and provide food for birds. Here are some simple ideas that can help:

• leaving rotting logs in a corner of your garden can make a home for hedgehogs and insects
• drilling holes in pruned branches and logs provides insects with shelter and nesting space
• wildlife thrives when it isn’t disturbed, so if possible have an area of your garden that you just leave alone - overgrown areas can provide places for animals such as hedgehogs or even foxes to rest or hibernate
• bird and bat boxes encourage creatures to nest and rest in your garden

• How to attract different animals to your garden Opens new window
• Download 'Birds and your garden' (PDF document, 1MB) Opens new window
• Help with PDF files

If you cannot download these PDF files then you can request a copy free from: Natural England, Enquiry Service, Northminster House, Peterborough, PE1 IUA. Telephone 0845 600 3078 or email enquiries@naturalengland.org.uk

Create a pond

Ponds are a magnet for wildlife, attracting frogs, toads, newts, dragonflies and other insects, as well as providing water for birds – and they’re surprisingly easy to create. If you haven’t got much space, you could even use an old sink or bath.

• Download 'Garden ponds and boggy areas' (PDF document, 649K) Opens new window
• Help with PDF files

If you cannot download this PDF file then you can request a copy free from: 

Natural England, PO BOX 1995, Wetherby, West Yorkshire LS23 7XX

Telephone: 0870 1214 177

Do feed the animals

• attract birds to your garden by offering them food using feeders and tables – make sure you keep these away from places that cats can get to, or put them near prickly bushes to deter furry predators
• clean bird tables regularly and don’t leave food out to rot
• keep feeding regularly – birds come to rely on the food you provide and can suffer if they waste energy flying to find food that isn’t there
• choose plants that flower and produce seeds or fruit at different times of the year, so that insects, birds and animals can have food in all seasons
• birds need to bathe frequently to keep their feathers in trim so even a small bird bath can be hugely valuable for attracting birds 
  

Plan your plants with wildlife in mind

Think about wildlife when buying your plants, or deciding what you will let grow in your garden – choose ones that attract and sustain a variety of insects and animals. For example:

• sunflower seeds provide food for birds once the flowers have died
• lavender attracts bees
• buddleia is great for butterflies and bees
• moths will come to red valerian, honeysuckle and night-flowering stock
• native ivy is one of the best wildlife plants of all, benefiting birds, mammals, butterflies, bees, hoverflies and other useful insects
  

• Plantpress - Find out more about plants for your wildlife garden Opens new window

Only use pesticides as a last resort

Pesticides, which are designed to kill and control pests, weeds and fungi, can also kill or deter the wildlife you want to attract to your garden – including the natural helpers that eat pests, so:

• try to avoid using chemicals wherever possible
• make sure pesticides or hazardous chemicals from paints and finishes don’t get into ponds as they can poison water life
  

• Controlling pests and weeds: greener choices

Control your cat

Give birds a chance by putting several bells on your cat’s collar. This should give birds warning of your pet’s approach. Multiple bells are best because some cats can learn to move silently with just one bell on their collars.

The wider issue

There are approximately 15m gardens in Britain, covering a larger area in England than all our nature reserves combined.

Encouraging wildlife into our gardens goes a little way towards compensating for the loss of habitat elsewhere. Garden ponds, for instance, have helped to conserve aquatic and amphibian life.

• More on nature under threat

More useful links

• Nature in the garden tips Opens new window
• Wild About Gardens Opens new window
• Guide to renting an allotment (home and community section)
• Composting and disposing of garden and kitchen waste