Build it and they'll come

Hi gardening fans.

My name’s Mark and I work in the RSPB’s web team. I normally write on the ‘Notes on Nature’ blog, but our gardening guru Adrian has asked me to put in a guest appearance to tell you what I’ve been up to in my garden lately. I’m representing the ‘small garden brigade’, flying the flag for what you can achieve with limited space - My garden’s pretty titchy at just a few metres square. You can find out bit more about it here and there's a picture of it below.

One thing I have learned from my efforts is that size really doesn’t matter when it comes to wildlife gardening. Three and a half years after moving in to my home, I’m still adding features, gradually ticking off the ‘actions’ suggested for my garden when I signed up for Homes for Wildlife.

I’m also finding new creatures moving in all the time, or at least paying me a visit!

Wood you believe it!

One thing that had been missing from my repertoire until recently was dead wood. I had to plant my garden from scratch, so there isn’t anything mature there to die! A fortunate encounter with a recently felled birch put out by an over-tidy gardener soon put that right though...

The trunk had been neatly chain-sawed into bite-size sections and left at the roadside for rubbish collection. Needless to say, after a bit of discussion, it never made it to the tip. It’s now being put to much better use!

Moving in

The next day, I was the proud owner of three neat pyramids of birch trunk sections among my borders and mighty pleased with them I was too!

Within a couple of days, slugs, earthworms, centipedes and at least two species of woodlice had set up home in the shady, moist environment under the piles. Isn’t it amazing how quickly wildlife moves in?

I’ll soon be drilling some holes into some of the sections to create extra homes for insects and have added cuttings from my shrubs to the piles for extra habitat and humidity. All kinds of creatures are looking for safe, dry and warm places to spend the winter months.

I’m also hoping that the hollow stems I slid in among the logs in will create homes for a variety of creatures too (they should be really good places for overwintering beasties too) and that my ivy will ramble its way across the piles too.

My local dunnocks are already finding them great places to forage in and around. Easily overlooked in the garden, these perky little birds with a charm all of their own tend to do their own thing in quieter corners of the garden.

They're not related to house sparrows despite their alternative name here of 'hedge sparrow' and unlike house sparrows, you'll usually find them alone or maybe in twos and threes at their more sociable times of the year.

I love them anyway. They're definitely one of my garden favourites, so I was glad to see my logs had also helped them out.

Looking good

As well as providing ideal places for invertebrates to live, my ‘pyramids’ look great (isn’t birch beautiful?) and have become a talking point for visitors. Proof that wildlife-friendly features can improve the way your garden looks and that there’s no need to sacrifice the aesthetics of your garden to make it good for wildlife!

I’d love to hear about your innovations. Have you created something a bit different, or stumbled across something fab to use in your garden like I did? And any advice and tips from other ‘small garden’ gardeners would be gratefully received!

By the way, I’ve really enjoyed reading all your comments so far on our Homes for Wildlife blog and hearing about what you’ve been doing. Thanks for sharing and please keep them coming!