How to Build a Biodiverse and Eco-Friendly Garden: The Do’s and Don’ts
As your garden starts to come to life with buzzing bees and singing birds, Danielle Simpson, Sales Director at Pye Homes in Oxfordshire, shares some simple tips on how to create and maintain an eco-friendly garden.
A new build home often provides ample opportunity to plan and grow an eco-friendly garden that will not only welcome Mother Nature’s creatures, but will also provide you with a pleasant space for relaxation, tailored to your personality and interests.
Whether you’re a seasoned green thumb or a budding enthusiast, enhancing your garden’s biodiversity is easier than you think. Here’s how to create a space that’s not only beautiful, but also kind to the planet.
Homemade compost heaps
Compost not only naturally enriches your soil but it also provides a warm hiding place for many creatures including slow-worms, which act as a natural pest control, and luckily for you creating a compost heap is actually very easy!
By combining ‘greens’ (nitrogen-rich materials such as grass clippings and fruit scraps) with ‘browns’ (carbon-rich materials such as dried leaves and cardboard), and ensuring the heap stays moist, you’ve just created your very own compost pile.
Top tip: To avoid attracting rats, restrain from adding bread or other cooked foods to your compost pile.
Native plants
Native plants are best adapted to your local environment, meaning they require less water, fewer chemicals, and attract more wildlife. For gardeners in the UK, plants like foxgloves, yarrow, primrose, and dog rose are great native options, with water lilies and yellow flag iris ideal in or around bodies of water, such as a pond.
It is also important to have something in bloom throughout the seasons so that bees and butterflies always have something to feed on.
Welcoming wildlife
It’s no secret that wildlife is the key to helping our gardens thrive, with bees pollinating our crops, birds and bats helping to disperse seeds, and earthworms and dung beetles enhancing the nutrients in soil, so it’s vital that your garden is inviting for creatures and critters alike.
Simple installations such as bird baths, bug hotels, bird and bat boxes, and small log piles can all help in welcoming a hive of activity to your outdoor space. Opting for nectar rich plants such as snapdragon, primrose, forget-me-not, and comfrey can also help in attracting handy pollinators.
If you’re feeling ambitious and have a little extra time on your hands, bigger projects such as installing a pond will attract frogs and newts, which act as a natural pest control by eating insects including slugs, snails, and flies.
We know it might be tempting to cut your grass to keep your garden looking ‘tidy’, but longer grass is so important for attracting and maintaining wildlife. It creates a diverse habitat that not only provides shelter and food sources, but also supports a variety of invertebrates, which in turn become food for larger animals like birds and hedgehogs.
Nighttime visitors
Speaking of hedgehogs, it’s important to keep in mind our nocturnal garden guests, and although we don’t see much of our nocturnal wildlife, they are there.
We can help nighttime creatures such as bats and hedgehogs by reducing or removing artificial lighting from our gardens. Honeysuckle and evening primrose are also great garden additions as they are night-blooming flowers that release their scents after dark, attracting pollinating insects.
Once you understand the key elements of what attracts local wildlife, your new build garden will soon turn into a bustling hive of activity.