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Wildlife Garden Design
The real secret of success with any type of garden lies in how well it is planned. Good design leads to a garden that is both functional and pleasing to look at. Clearly this is less of a problem when starting from scratch, but re-designing your whole garden can be daunting. We offer a free consultation during which we aim to fully understand all that you want from the garden, any problems with the existing garden, all of your tastes and preferences, how much time (and inclination) you have for maintenance, what kind of budget you have available and many other details. We will then contact you in writing with a firm quote and an outline of the design, for discussion. This gives you a chance to feedback ideas and concerns and for any changes to be made before the design is finalised. After this a detailed outline plan of the proposed design will be produced along with any necessary construction drawings, a planting plan and a schedule of works. Please enquire for further details.
Wildlife Friendly Garden Maintenance
Whether you're looking for regular maintenance or just some one off help with your garden we can help. With an extensive knowledge of plants and their requirements and many years experience in a variety of gardens we can help with pruning, weeding, digging, planting, lawn care, tree care, composting, propagating and all general fruit, vegetable and ornamental gardening tasks. We work in a completely organic way and are happy to advise our clients on identifying plants, how to reduce the need for weeding, what plants might work well in a particular situation, the best time of year to prune your shrubs and how to make your garden more wildlife friendly. We work closely with our clients to ensure that the service we provide is tailored to your individual requirements and your budget. We also provide a pond maintenance, repair and rejuvenation service, most work being carried out in late summer/early autumn when the water is naturally at its lowest level and most young amphibians have emerged from the pond.
Planting for Wildlife
Any garden created for wildlife must provide shelter and food for local fauna. It should include a good mixture of plants, including shrubs, trees and grasses, and nectar- and pollen-rich flowers. A wide variety of plants that provide food sources at different times of the year, allied to sensitive management, can greatly benefit biodiversity. As a general rule, native shrubs and trees offer the best choice for wildlife – providing caterpillar food plants for a variety of moths, and berries and seeds for birds and small mammals. Both native and non-native flowers appeal to bees, butterflies and other pollinators, as long as the pollen and nectar is made available to them i.e. single flowered plants with an open habit. We can provide a planting plan tailored to your specific requirements, source the plants from a variety of local nurseries and plant them up in the right places making the garden a richer and more interesting place, both for you and for wildlife.
Hard Landscaping
Hard surfaces don't make an obvious place for nature to thrive. But for those times of year when the lawn is too wet and uninviting, or in gardens where there is no lawn, the patio or decking area becomes our social hub in the garden, and it can almost do the same job for wildlife too. It's the perfect place for an array of pots where you can tend bedding plants, climbers and even trees and shrubs, and beneath which much wildlife can hide in the damp, dark conditions. With a pergola or arbour built over the top, you could grow wisterias, honeysuckles or hops overhead as a natural roof, creating sun-dappled areas. We have built many patios where the amount of stone is reduced by in-filling with gravel and planting low growing thymes, stonecrops, chamomile and thrift which can spread to produce a carpet that is attractive both to people and wildlife.
Wildlife Ponds
There is a wealth of wildlife that depends heavily on ponds for its success, and most of it will not only make a welcome addition to the diversity of your garden, but will be of great benefit too. Small inhabitants of your pond will be numerous. You are likely to discover in and above its waters pond skaters, water beetles, snails, mayflies, caddis flies, damselflies and dragonflies. Where there are insects, amphibians are not far behind. Frogs, toads and newts are all quite happy breeding and living in and around small bodies of water, as long as it's deep enough - around 60cm - for their purposes. Several bird species will enjoy drinking and feeding from your pond too, and if it's large enough you might attract swallows and house martins that swoop across the water's surface plucking off insects, and using its mud to build their nests. We will design, build and plant up your pond and the surrounding area, utilising a variety of different materials and methods to suit your preference and budget. Please enquire for further details.
Formal ponds
Formal garden ponds are rarely good for wildlife. They are often made from concrete, with vertical sides and overhanging flagstone surrounds. These steep sides make them dangerous for small mammals such as hedgehogs and even cats and small dogs may fall in and be unable to climb out. Frogs and toads can get trapped in these ponds and may drown once they grow past the tadpole stage. However, if you already have a formal pond there are many ways in which it can be made more wildlife friendly. Since most pond wildlife prefers shallow water, a retaining wall can be built inside the pond near its edge and the space between this wall and the pond edge can be back-filled using stones, gravel or subsoil. Back-filling to within 5 or 10 cm of the surface will create a shallow water habitat where a variety of native plants can establish themselves.
Wildflower Meadows
It is encouraging to see that keepers of many large public gardens and open spaces are these days leaving large areas of lawn uncut during spring and summer. The lacy grass flowers, interspersed with oxeye daisies, buttercups, cow parsley and orchids, are far more interesting than the closely mown areas. Small gardens too can play their part in the revival of the flowery mead. It is possible to introduce some of the more robust wildflower species into a garden, and then manage the resulting mini meadow in such a way as to provide the best possible environment for wild plants to thrive, which in turn can lead to a greater diversity of plants and wildlife. Mini meadows do take a certain amount of effort, but they are worth it; everything from moth larvae to small mammals and amphibians will benefit from a little wildness in the garden. There are several types of grassland habitat - cornfield, spring meadow and summer meadow - which can be introduced into a garden in miniature. These will be most successful if the grass and flower varieties selected suit the conditions in your area. Please enquire for more details.
Bug Hotels/Wildlife Towers
A bug hotel is a structure that provides homes for many different creatures. The one pictured is a tower built from discarded pallets but they may also be built from left over bricks in the form of a wall or other recycled materials. Our gardens are home to a wide range of living creatures and an average garden can hold hundreds of different species of invertebrate. Many of these are very small, so are often overlooked. With all this diversity of life, it is good to know that very few creatures (ones that gardeners call pests) cause significant damage to our prized flowers, fruit and vegetables. Even better, there are many more creatures that help us control these pests. A wildlife tower can help you encourage these mini friends into your garden. Dead wood and loose bark will provide homes for beetles, centipedes, spiders and woodlice; rolled up corrugated cardboard is favoured by lacewings; hollow stems, such as bamboo canes or holes drilled into blocks of wood, make good nest sites for solitary bees; straw and hay provide many opportunities for invertebrates to burrow in and find safe hibernation sites.
Green Roofs
A green roof or living roof is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted on top of a waterproofing membrane. It may also include additional layers such as a root barrier and drainage and irrigation systems. Once completed and established a green roof can provide habitats and food sources for a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates, help in the drive to cut carbon emissions and reduce water run-off dramatically. There's no denying that retro-fitting a green roof is not cheap or easy. Plants need something to get their roots into and that adds up to a lot of weight; some roofs just can't take it. But the technology is getting ever better, and green roofs are now available at about 50kg/square metre, which is within the load-bearing limit of most roofs. And green roofs don't need to be flat either - their slope can be as much as 45 degrees. At the very least, it is worth considering a green roof for something like a new shed or flat garage roof. Please call for details.
Living Driveways
Most people need somewhere to park their car (or two), and it is so easy to believe that you've got no choice but to sacrifice a large chunk of your garden (and its wildlife potential) under tarmac or paving. However there are other options. Only your tyres really need to sit on something hard, so why not limit yourself to a two-track driveway with grass either side and down the middle? Alternatively, a 'cellular paving' or 'ground reinforcement' system can be used. This consists of interlocking honeycomb tiles made from recycled plastic which are strong enough to park on but where the gaps are filled with soil which can be seeded with grass. It won't give you a perfect lawn but it will be green, hard-wearing, kind on the worms and will dramatically reduce the area of your garden lost to tarmac. And because rainwater can soak into the soil, it will also help reduce the risk of flash flooding. We currently use Gridforceâ„¢ LDPE grid units which are laid on a free draining stone base, eliminating the need for drainage pipework and returning storm water to the water table, thereby relieving pressure on sewers.
Compost Bins
We actively encourage all of our clients to home compost. If you don't already have a compost bin, we'll make you one from recycled pallets. Composting provides a means of converting waste materials from both the kitchen and garden into a free, environmentally friendly source of organic matter which can be used throughout the garden to improve soil fertility, conserve soil moisture and enhance plant growth. It also helps the community as a whole by diverting organic refuse away from the dustbin and ultimately reducing landfill. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it will provide a habitat for enormous numbers of insects and other invertebrates and these in turn will attract the creatures that feed on them. Compost is full of mini-beasts that will provide a great feast for thrushes, robins and blackbirds, as well as predators of soil-borne pests. Furthermore, over winter, a compost heap is an extremely important feature of a wildlife garden, acting as a mini-wildlife refuge where insects, bacteria and fungi carry on the decomposition process while providing a hibernation site for amphibians and hedgehogs.
Log Piles
One of the simplest ways to create a habitat for the biodiversity that thrives on, in and around decaying wood is to create a log pile. At its simplest a log pile is precisely that, but it is possible to create something that is both aesthetically pleasing and practically useful from dead wood. A traditional log pile, made from wood destined to be burned as fuel, is stacked for ease of access rather than biodiversity but will still make the ideal habitat for small mammals, amphibians and the numerous insects that either feed on wood or predate the bugs that do. Stacked in a manner that looks more like a tepee, the log pile can become suitable for larger animals such as hibernating hedgehogs. We can make log piles from wood cut from your own garden in the course of routine maintenance or we can provide logs of various thickness and length ourselves. Wood from broad-leaved trees, especially oak, beech, ash, elm and sycamore, will attract the greatest range of species. Gaps between logs can be planted up with spring bulbs, ground cover plants like bugle and wild strawberry or attractive primrose and violets.