Fersiwn Gymraeg ar gael yma
If you’re enjoying spending some time in your green spaces with this nice weather, why not look at ways of welcoming and helping a wide range of wildlife into your gardens. With autumn coming, here are four ways you could attract different wildlife to your gardens:
Fill it with plants
One way of making your garden space wildlife friendly is by filling it with plants. Plants are a solid foundation of the food chain meaning where there are plants, there’s shelter and food for so many creatures making their homes on it. Flowers such as geraniums, daisies or lavender not only fill your garden up with colour and are relatively easy to look after but they also attract pollinators meaning you’ll hear the sound of bees visiting your garden pretty soon.
Home is where the hedgehog is
One creature that could do with some assistance in finding a home in your garden is the hedgehog. It is estimated that there are less than a million left in the UK. If you’ve got a bit of space and an afternoon free to create a home you could find a hedgehog arriving to rest, hibernate or even raise their hoglets. Don’t panic if you find that it isn’t occupied immediately, it might take some time for a hedgehog to call it home and remember you won’t see any activity between October and April because they’ll be hibernating. Follow this link for some handy tips on creating a hedgehog home.
Let it grow wild
An easy way of welcoming wildlife into your garden which also makes your life easier is letting it grow wild. By mowing your lawn less you’ll have more time to enjoy what creatures visit your mini jungle with beetles and insects able to wander and birds can come and visit to feed on the seeds. If you can resist mowing your lawn until the end of the summer, it will mimic a hay meadow. Letting your grass grow will also provide much needed shelter for small creatures should the weather change.
Make sure check-in is open 24 hours a day
Creating bug hotels is a fun activity that all the fun family can chip in and help build. One advantage of building a bug hotel is it can provide some shelter for a wide range of creatures galore, and you can build it to whatever free space you might have to build it. You can build the hotel at any time of the year but if you have time in the autumn you can use natural materials already around you such as dry grass or hay to build your hotel. Once built, sit back, relax and wait for the first of the autumn visitors to arrive. For a step-by-step guide and instructions of what you’ll need to build your hotel, click here.