The Wildlife-friendly Garden. Michael Chinery

become coffins for small animals.

       Michael Chinery

      The great green bush-cricket is a noisy inhabitant of the many undisturbed garden hedges and shrubberies that exist both on the European continent and in southern England.

      Thousands of shrews and other small mammals die every year in carelessly abandoned bottles. Getting in to sample the dregs is easy, but climbing the smooth sides to get out again certainly is not. Drink cans are not quite so bad, but beetles and many other useful creatures regularly drown in them.

       Michael Chinery

      Let brambles scramble over your hedge. Insects will sip nectar from the flowers in summer and the birds, and you, will be able to enjoy the fruits later in the year.

       Fruit bushes and netting If you need to put nets over your fruit bushes, do make sure that they are taut and well anchored so that birds and other animals cannot get tangled up in them.

       Weedkillers and pesticides If you cannot survive without using weedkillers or other pesticides, be sure to follow the instructions carefully, and to dispose of any dregs where they cannot do any harm. It is very easy to kill vegetation and its associated animal life by careless application of pesticides, especially in windy conditions when sprays can drift far from their intended targets.

       CONSERVATION TIP

      Don’t use peat in your garden. Our peat bogs have shrunk alarmingly over the last 100 years or so because of the demand for peat, and their wildlife has dwindled accordingly. Plenty of alternatives to peat are on the market now, and for hanging baskets there is ‘Supermoss’ – a sphagnum substitute made from recycled cloth and paper pulp.

      A healthy garden

      It took millions of years for nature to build up an equilibrium, in which each plant and animal species has its place and in which each helps to keep the rest under control. Nothing lives alone in nature, for every creature either eats or is eaten by one or more other creatures. We have destroyed much of this delicate balance, but it is still not too late to put the process into reverse.

       WHAT GOOD ARE MOSQUITOES?

      This question is commonly asked by many people who have been bitten by these insects. Mosquitoes don’t do us any good, of course, but, in common with all other living things, they form part of nature’s intricate web and have a role to play in nature’s economy. From the point of view of a hungry swallow or a stickleback, mosquitoes are actually quite good!

       Restoring the balance

      The key thing is to live and work with nature, steering it in the direction we want in our gardens instead of destroying it completely. If we can achieve an approximation to nature’s balance of predators and prey, then no one species will be able to multiply to such an extent that it becomes a nuisance. By creating some natural habitats in your garden you will inevitably attract their characteristic wildlife. Trees and shrubs, for example, attract birds; ponds are magnets for frogs and toads; and flower beds pull in many colourful insects. These guests will add considerable interest to your garden and will also do much to keep down the less desirable visitors – the pests. They will not eradicate the pests, but the amount of damage is likely to be minimal and you will be able to boast a healthy garden with a balanced ecology.

       CJ Wild bird Foods/David White

      Although few of these young spiders, just hatched from their eggs, will survive to become adults, undoubtedly they will eat a lot of insects before themselves falling prey to various enemies.

       A TYPICAL GARDEN FOOD WEB

       Michael Chinery

       CJ Wild bird Foods/David White

       Colin Varndell

      Moth feeds on nectar; spider eats moth; blackbird eats spider. This is a typical food chain. Another example might be plant; insect; vole; fox. Many more such chains can be observed in the garden, and it quickly becomes obvious that these chains are all linked together in a web – because most animals eat more than one kind of food. Blackbirds, for example, are equally happy with earthworms and elderberries, while the bank vole may vary its normally vegetarian diet with snails and fungi as well as insects. Just a few of the chains in a garden food web are illustrated here, with the arrows pointing from the food to the consumers. You will find that each chain starts with a plant. With each species kept in check by its predators and/or food supplies, the whole community remains in a healthy equilibrium.

      Garden friends and foes

      Older nature books commonly listed the gardener’s friends and foes, but now that we know a lot more about the life histories of the animals and know that everything has its place in nature’s complex web, it is not so easy to pigeonhole them in this way. For example, a centipede eating a harmful slug might be regarded as a friend, but you might change your opinion on discovering that a centipede’s diet consists mainly of other centipedes. Nevertheless, it is still possible to recognize some positively useful creatures – friends – which should be welcomed into the garden and some without which our gardens would be better off. These are the pests that eat our crops and spread diseases and they must be discouraged if not actually destroyed.

       FRIEND OR FOE?

      This simple, although not infallible, rule of thumb may help you to decide which are the goodies and which are the not-so-good. Fast-moving garden creatures are generally predators and on your side, whereas slow-moving creatures tend to be herbivores and are thus often harmful in the garden.

       Our friends

       Ground beetles These long-legged, fast-moving insects are most likely to be found lurking under logs and stones. They hunt by night, destroying slugs and many harmful caterpillars.

       Michael Chinery

      Long, sensitive antennae enable the ground beetle to track down its prey at night.

       Lacewings In spite of their fragile appearance, the lacewings are voracious carnivores, destroying hundreds or even thousands of greenfly during their lives.

       Michael Chinery

      Lacewings often come to lighted windows at night; introduce them to your roses or other plants where they can eat the troublesome