Encouraging Wildlife to your Garden

Whether you are living in a city or out in the sticks, you should still be able to attract wildlife to your garden with a little bit of work. You would be surprised at what critters are lurking in and around your garden, which only require a little bit of encouragement to frequent your garden on a regular basis. From foxes, to frogs or finches, you may soon have your own wildlife reserve on your doorstep.

There are some downsides to having certain animals in your garden, that may eat all of your plant life and dig up your flowers beds, but these kinds of animals are uncommon. On the other hand, most bird varieties can help to keep your plant and vegetable plots bug free, which is always a good thing.

Although these examples apply more to larger gardens, you can adapt these to suit your garden size and you should start to see an improvement in animal life coming to your garden.

5 Tips to bring more wildlife to your garden:

Bird boxes are a great way to encoruage birds to visit your garden on a regualr basis.

Set up nesting boxes:

Set up a small wooden nesting box, which will attract birds to roost and lay their young. The same goes for birds and other flying animals, who will relish to chance to get a dry warm home during the wet and winter months.

You can make a bird box yourself, or pick them up quite cheaply from your local DIY store.

Create a wild area

By letting platlife to grow in a natural way, this will encourage wild critters to that area, as the platlife will more closely resemble their natural habitats. Whether it is a bramble hedge row or grass thicket, animals and insects will relish a mix of natural weeds and overgrown plant-life, rather than excessive, surgical gardening practices.

Build a pond

By creating a static water source for frogs, birds and animals to use, will encourage wildlife to the garden. The side of the pond should have a ramp to allow animals in and out without them drowning.

Although building a pond is quite ambitious and more likely in larger gardens, even installing a small bird bath could bring flying visitors to the garden.

Slug pellets are known to poison animals such as hedgehogs.

Dont leave pesticides and slug pellets around

Hedgehogs in aprticular can be poisoned by shop bought slug pellets, which will drastically reduce the chances for these kinds of animals to return to the garden.

The same goes for excessive use of pesticide sprays and fertilizers, which may harm the more sensitive animals which rely on these plants for food. Try and keep your garden as natural as possible, for example egg shells crushed up are thought to be a good slug repellent.

Feed your visitors!

Birds, especially over the winter require a mix of fats, nuts and seeds to build them up over the cold times, which is why you should leave food out for them to entice them into the garden.

A block of bacon lard or grease, mixed with seeds and nuts, and then packed into a plastic cup, with a string through the top makes for a filling snack for passing birds - just try and hang it out of reach from the pesky squirrels!

It can take some time to encourage animals to settle in your garden, but once they start visiting, you will be sure to have a whole range of different critters to watch from your window. Just give them a head start and your garden will begin to flourish.