Your garden stories

• A balcony for wildlife: Debbie Vannozzi
• Small garden, big opportunities - Mark Ward
• A medium-sized urban garden - Carol Lee
• A large suburban garden - Nicola Hunt
• A Homes for Wildlife oasis - Kevin Caley
• Making the best of a fallen tree - Colin and Christine Snape
• Digging a pond - Katie Fuller
• Buckets for beetles - John Day

Small garden, big opportunity - Mark Ward

I moved to my first home in the village of Little Paxton, Cambridgeshire in summer 2006. I bought a ground floor flat adjacent to Paxton Pits nature reserve that came with the bonus of a small garden.

Apart from some unhealthy grass, a weeping willow, a cracked (and thus waterless) plastic pond mould and a tiny, ‘Christmas tree’, the garden was bare - and devoid of wildlife.

Being realistic

With a garden of barely eight square metres, I had to be realistic. Privacy, somewhere to sit and access around the garden were must haves – as was space for a rotating washing line! The rest I devoted to wildlife.

Step one was deciding what was worth keeping. The willow certainly was, as was a sapling mahonia - cover for birds once it ‘grew up'. The 'Christmas tree' went.

'It has been really exciting and rewarding to see things develop so quickly - and to know I have turned a barren space into a home for wildlife.'

I knew that in the ideal wildlife garden, you have grass and don’t use decking and paving, but grass clearly didn’t grow well here. I took it up and laid ‘stepping stones’ among wood chippings. This enabled me to get out and around the garden and tend to plants.

It proved its wildlife worth by providing homes for earwigs, woodlice and ants - and became a popular foraging area for robins and blackbirds.

I also put flowering plants and fruit and vegetables in pots and tubs on the patio I laid outside my patio doors.

Taking cover

The garden is exposed to prevailing westerly winds, being on the end of a block, so I was keen to develop shelter. I planted wildlife-friendly trees (a rowan and a ‘John Downie’ crab apple - famed for its wildlife appeal), and shrubs, including holly, cotoneaster and pyracantha for year-round greenery and berries. I am also developing a small beech hedge.

Once I had filled the borders I dug, I went up in the world - literally! I trained climbers (including ivy and honeysuckle – both wildlife winners) high up the walls and perimeter fences - even the balcony above at my neighbour’s request!

I added buddleias, which, along with the original (now managed) honeysuckle and hebes that I planted, provided nectar for marmalade hoverflies, bumble and honey bees and butterflies: comma, large and small white and red admiral.

I liked the idea of a pond beneath the willow, so I expanded the existing hole, re-profiled it with pond liner, made the edges more natural and stocked it with pond plants. Frogs and pond snails soon appeared. I left the area around it to go wild with nettles and other wildflowers.

Pulling in the birds

The birds came before cover established thanks to feeders, a birdbath and bird tables - and a variety of food. The sight of 18 collared doves crammed into my little garden eating seed one winter’s day was quite something!

Getting my flat ready came second to establishing the garden!  A clue to the amount of time I spent in the garden in the first two years is the total of 90 different species of bird I recorded using my garden and the space above it!

More to come

It has been really exciting and rewarding to see things develop so quickly - and to know I have turned a barren space into a home for wildlife.

I’ve also enjoyed ‘ticking off’ the tasks in my ‘Homes for Wildlife task list’. I'll also be establishing a wildflower bed, adding more flowering plants and a deadwood pile – oh, and trying to get that bird list to 100!

Homes for Wildlife tips

Mark has really made the most of the space he has available. Here are some tips and ideas for the ongoing management of his garden.

• With such a small garden - in which the lawn was barely surviving - it would have been easy, if not expensive, to pave it over. Hard surface in residential areas is bad for the environment, increasing the heat effect, temperature and water run off when it rains, leading to localised flooding. Laying bark chips is a good alternative as it allows water to permeate naturally into the soil. It also has direct wildlife benefits by providing a home for invertebrates which live in wood and leaf litter. These in turn provide food for birds and small mammals like hedgehogs and shrews.
• Planting mixed deciduous and evergreen shrubs to provide nectar in summer for insects and fruits in winter for birds is effective. The dense planting is particularly beneficial as it creates humid conditions for the plants, so they need less watering. It also helps keep the ground moist for soil and litter invertebrates and provides somewhere for ground foraging birds to feed - particularly in summer when it might be too dry to find food for their chicks. Dense cover also allows birds to safely move in and out of the garden and provides them with shelter while they are in it.
• The willow might need managing in future years. The main trunk could be selectively pollarded, removing a third of the larger branches every three years. It will then acquire a range of growth stages and provide yet more structural variation to the garden. If the plant is multi-stemmed, coming from the base, a third of the older stems could be cut every three years.
• A careful eye will need to be kept on the nettles to prevent them taking over, keeping the bed cut to within bounds. Nettles, when added to water can break down to make an ideal fertiliser for the garden. Topping old nettles in late winter removes their shading effect and should improve early, fresh young growth in time for egg laying of small tortoiseshell and peacock butterflies.

Last modified: 19 August 2008