Top Five Nature Friendly Gardening Tips for March

RSPB's Morwenna Alldis reveals how to make your garden a haven for nature this month

For me, March is the month of awakening in nature. New leaves and buds are fattening and unfurling. Many creatures that have spent the winter months snoozing, are now stretching delicate wings, wriggling webbed feet, and shaking out their prickles, ready to start the year anew. Spring finally feels tangible, as nature gears-up for the breeding season. And as birds pair-up and start to feather their nests, your gardens and local green spaces become a hive of activity. The beautiful dawn chorus also warms its vocal chords in March, typically commencing an hour before sunrise. Skylarks, thrushes, robins and blackbirds are the first to sing in the day, later followed by wrens and warblers. At least once this month, I urge you to set your alarm a tad earlier, go outside and just listen. The birds’ symphony of layered sound will hopefully uplift even another day in lockdown.

Photo: Robin singing on branch. Credit: Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)

No matter what space you have outdoors there will be something you can do to help your local wildlife this March. It’s important to remember, that whilst we can excitedly get whipped up in the assurance of spring, this month is tough for many creatures. Temperatures can get very low, especially at night, and nature’s parlour hasn’t restocked her juicy berries which the birds plundered throughout autumn and winter. And yet this month our wildlife heavily relies food and safe shelter because they need to breed.

Photo: Blue tit feeding chicks in tree hole nest. Credit: Blue tit Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)

Follow our top five nature friendly gardening tips to give your wildlife a helping hand this March

  1. Grow flowers for butterflies and bees – with the loss of many of our natural wildflowers, it’s vital to provide nectar and pollen rich plants to feed our bees and butterflies. March is the perfect time for planting as the soil starts to gradually warm up and if you start planting now you can enjoy a blooming marvellous garden later this year. If you don’t have a garden, plant-up a small window box - you’ll be amazed at how much wildlife you can help from even a small area.

Photo: Red admiral butterfly on purple flowers. Credit: Jenny Tweedie (rspb-images.com)

Hear the buzz: This month you may spot solitary bees, queen bees and butterflies emerging from hibernation. However, it’s a risky time of year to wake up as the weather can be so volatile – warm one minute and plummeting to frost the next. It’s essential that these insects have access to food in the form of energy giving nectar. One of the earliest flowering plants are dandelions – so whilst these are often seen as weeds and pulled up, please let learn to love your dandelions, or at least look the other way this spring - they’re doing a really important job for our garden wildlife. Primroses and willows are also early bloomers for bees and butterflies.

Photo: RSPB volunteer watching solitary bee on cow parsley. Credit: Andy Purcell (rspb-images.com)

Other perfect spring blooms include:

  • Apple or crabapple
  • Lungwort
  • Crocus
  • Marjorm
  • Kale
  • Cowslip
  • Comfry

We also sell a range of seeds for planting here.

  1. Grow your own bird food – sunflowers don’t only bring a wonderful splash of colour to every garden, their seeds are also a much-loved and nutrient rich snack for garden birds. Greenfinches and goldfinches can be seen feasting from the dried heads of sunflowers. The sunflower’s nectar also gets the thumbs up from bees and butterflies too. Growing sunflowers is a great activity to connect children with nature – why not have a competition to see whose sunflower can grow the highest.

 

Photo: Bees enjoying sunflower pollen. Credit: Jenny Tweedie (rspb-images.com)

  1. Create a mini pond – birds need daily access to water, both to drink and to bathe. And our amphibians start breeding this month too. Mini ponds allow you to give nature a home in even the smallest of outside spaces. Simply use a washing-up bowl, positioned somewhere that gets a good amount of light, but isn’t in full sun all day. You can sink your container into the ground or leave it on top. Ensure that you use logs, twigs or rocks to create pathways into and out of the pond for small mammals. Popping a pond in your garden is the most effective way of giving a home to a multitude of wildlife. For full guidance visit here

 

Photo: Children constructing a mini pond. Credit: Nick Cunard (rspb-images.com)

  1. Lazy gardening - Leave a patch of your lawn to grow longer, it will become a haven for all sorts of garden wildlife, including, grasshoppers, moths and butterflies. It also offers a damp and safe hideout for amphibians and reptiles.

Photo: Common frog sat amongst long grass and daisies. Credit: Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com) 

  1. Build a Bug B&B - Bug hotels are fab for mini-beasts and fun for families to make. Layer materials such as recycled masonry bricks; bamboo canes; piping or even recycled plastic bottles with both ends cut off.  Alternatively, leave a small pile of deadwood in a corner of your garden - fungi, mosses and lichens will love it and as the pile rots, voila, another bug hotel.  Pop any garden pruning on top of your log pile, to mulch down and enrich the site. Click here for more help. Or you can purchase some ready to go insect houses here

Photo: Bug hotel. Credit: Nick Cunard (rspb-images.com)

With light at the end of the lockdown tunnel now visible, let’s say a big thank you to our gardens, greenspaces and the wildlife that calls them home this March – by gardening with wildlife in mind, because without nature’s tonic this past year I don’t personally know how I would have coped.

Photo: Daffodils in sunlight. Credit: Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)