If you have any kind of outdoor space at all which you can call your own, it makes sense to try and make the most of it. Not many people have this, and it is something that you can either squander or turn into something beautiful. There are a lot of things you can do with a garden, but one of the most valuable and rewarding, not to mention enjoyable, is to try and turn it into something of a hotspot for wildlife. The more life you can bring to your garden, the more your garden will be helping out the natural in your neck of the woods – and the more that you will probably enjoy being in it too. Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to attract more wildlife to your own garden.

Choose Your Flowers Carefully

It should be no surprise that having plenty of flowers in the garden is one of the most important parts of ensuring that you attract more bees and insects. But you need to be careful about your choice of flowers, as some are going to work out better than others in this respect. It’s wise to be a little thoughtful about your choice of flowers to ensure that you attract as much wildlife into the garden as you possibly can. So what are some of the things that you should be looking for when you are trying to choose between different types of flowers?

In general, it’s wise to avoid anything that has been highly-bred to appear with huge double blooms and so on. These are, despite their appearances, relatively low in nectar, and while they might look beautiful they are not going to be much good for the bees and other pollinators. You should aim instead for those plants which produce plenty of nectar for a long time throughout the season, to maximize their impact and draw in as many pollinators as possible. You can find native and non-native options here, although as a general rule you should aim to use as many native plants as possible, and fewer non-native, in order to help keep your garden as environmentally friendly as possible.

Use Some Bird Feeders

A big part of introducing more wildlife into the garden is aiming for more birds, and actually this is one of the easier parts of the whole process. It’s a relatively simple thing to be able to introduce and attract birds: most of all, you just want to make sure that you have a few bird feeders dotted around the garden here and there. By getting some good quality wild bird feeders, you can expect more birds to not only visit but stay and return again, which is what you need to do if you are to make your garden a real wildlife hotspot in no time. As well as feeders, think about installing one or two bird baths too. Not only will that help, but you will find it adorable to watch the birds clean themselves in the bath! Most importantly, be sure to put up a few nesting boxes, so that the birds also have an opportunity to breed in your garden.

Plant Trees

Trees are a central part of any ecosystem, so the more that you can make room for in your garden, the better. Having lots of trees around you will actually make you healthier, as they produce oxygen and make the air in the garden cleaner to breathe. It is therefore good for yourself and everyone around you if you have plenty of trees in your garden. Now, you might feel that you don’t have space for a tree, but don’t be so quick to assume that. Generally, you can buy trees pretty young and small, and keep them in pots most of the time. You can almost certainly have at least a few trees here and there. If you have even more space, you might even be able to plant out a few trees in the ground too, which is absolutely going to make your garden much more vibrant in life in many ways. It is a joy to grow trees too, and to be able to watch them get bigger over time.

Avoid Pesticides

Sometimes it is just as much about what not to do as what to do, and one of the major things you should avoid doing is to use pesticides. That might sound obvious, but it is amazing how often people forget that pesticides also kill the insects that you want to encourage. You can’t pick and choose with this kind of thing – you simply have to make sure that you do not use pesticides at all in your garden if you want to encourage as much life as possible in it. If you are growing fruit and veg and you want to discourage pests, there are many more effective means of doing so than using pesticides. You can keep slugs at bay by creating little water moats around your crops, and aphids can be dealt with according to the natural food cycle by introducing some ladybirds. There are always solutions for dealing with pests which do not require pesticide use, so there is never an excuse to go down that route.

Get Composting

Arguably one of the most pleasing and enjoyable things you can do is to make your own compost. This is an environmentally friendly means of dealing with waste, and it is a sure fire way of encouraging plenty more life into the garden. It’s pretty simple to make compost. You just need a big compost bin, and then you need to make sure that you put all kitchen food waste (apart from meats and so on) in it. Then you also need to add any waste from the garden, such as pulled weeds, mown grass and other things of this nature. Add to this some egg boxes, corrugated cardboard and a little ash to neutralize it all, and in around nine months you will start to develop crumbly, sweet-smelling compost.

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