How people like you are giving nature a home

You may have seen our TV advert over the summer? It featured several of our nature stars, people like you who make their garden a wildlife-friendly zone. But just why are they nature stars?

We asked some of them just how their family was giving nature a home. And here's what they said:

Bethany

We try our best to provide homes for a variety of wildlife. We have several bird boxes, but the birds also nest in our hedges and trees.

We have a hedgehog house, but again find that hedgehogs will often nest elsewhere, including in a pile of dry onions once! The insect house is a recent addition, and we have a small pond. Even though the pond is very small, it's home for at least eight frogs, providing frogspawn and tadpoles every year.

We regularly put food and have many bird feeders, as well a ground feeder for them. Another visitor to the bird feeders is a little wood mouse! Each night we put out mealworms for the hedgehogs and are lucky enough to watch several per night stop by for a meal.

It's really important to provide water for nature, so have two tall birdbaths and lots of saucers of water on the ground dotted around the garden.

Myra

My son Bradley is nature crazy, so its been great fun working together with various projects in our small urban garden, from building a mini-nature reserve, cooking up bird food treats and making sure our bugs have a good home to live in at our bug hotel. 

We are very lucky to live next to woodland with a variety of old and new trees, which means everything we need for our wildlife projects is on the doorstep, a great way of spending a couple of hours together in the great outdoors. 

We see the woods as an extension to our garden hoping to bring the wildlife in to feed in a safe environment, with the many feeders always stocked with meal worms, suet blocks, niger seeds, sunflower hearts, wild bird mix, peanuts and our own kitchen scraps special treats. 

Our current project is building a hedgehog house in readiness for their hibernation period. Bradley already has the next activity planned with a bat box as we have previously seen them flying by the house. 

Our biggest passion is watching the many birds flock to the feeders and Bradley likes nothing more than to tick them off in his bird books. We regularly see green woodpeckers on our walks and would dream to see them visit the garden, so that's definitely on the wish list!

Bradley records all of his wildlife activities in his nature diary, which includes a well thought out plan, pictures and sightings in and outside the garden.

Chris

As a family we have a few areas in the garden for wildlife. There's an old rockery that we now just leave to its own devices, as it has turned into a miniature slow-worm reserve.

This area is covered by a vine-type plant and long grass with some plastic sheeting in parts to serve as shelter for the slow-worms, particularly early on in the year before the plant cover takes hold. Lola and her brothers Luka and Josh love checking under the plastic sheeting to see the slow-worms warming themselves.

At the bottom of the garden we have a bramble patch that's popular with a group of sparrows, particularly in winter and spring. This also attracts lots of bees and butterflies when the brambles flower and provide us with plenty of blackberries through August and September.

Next to the brambles we have our log pile - it's growing each year whenever we prune back a tree. This is a favourite with our slow-worms and of course woodlice, which Lola and Luka love to hold and observe.

When we moved to the house two years ago there was a slab was missing in the patio, so this year we turned it into a mini-pond and have pond snails and plenty of midge larvae in there already.

In a sheltered spot we have two hoverfly lagoons - consisting of a milk bottle cut in half, filled with organic material and water to simulate standing water that would form in a tree hollow. This is our first year doing this and plan to extend it next year. This has really triggered the children's interest, and they will regularly come running in to tell me of the hoverflies they have seen near the lagoons.

We cut our lawn in two stages, one week we cut one half, and the following week the other half. We have a few flowers that grow in the lawn, the most popular with bees is clover. By cutting half at a time it ensures there is always some flowers in the lawn for pollinators and the children regularly take our bee identification sheet out in the garden and see how many different types they can spot.

Finally, and the easiest one for us, is we leave the grass under the trampoline to grow long providing extra cover for lots of animals and insects.

My two youngest spend a lot of time in the garden and by creating these spaces for nature it gives them something to do and care for, helping them develop a real interest in nature.

What about you?

If you're giving nature a home where you live, you can share you story with us on Twitter and Instagram using #naturestars