A garden doesn’t need to be a miniature nature reserve to be brilliant for wildlife. Remember that almost every garden will have some wildlife in it, whether you like it or not! Work with what you’ve got and think about what types of habitat you can realistically offer.
Not every wildlife garden has to have a pond and a meadow and a hedge and an insect hotel. Work with your neighbours to increase the size and types of habitats you can create. In smaller spaces it may be better to have one very good piece of habitat rather than several small and fragmented ones that cannot support many species. However, the ideal size of a habitat will vary. An area needs to be large enough to be effective, but sometimes lots of smaller, joined up habitats are more resilient to factors such as climate change.
Nature street examples:
- Creating a few smaller, sympathetically managed ponds can be better than one large pond because they offer a variety of habitats and are more resilient to change. Should one of the ponds dry up or become polluted, there will be others available to wildlife.
- Your garden might just have space for a small stone pile. It might be small, but it will still be a valuable habitat for hibernating amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates, especially if one of the gardens around you contains a wildlife pond.
- A clump of flowers is more useful to insects than single flowers dotted about, particularly if pollinators can easily move between clumps.