If you are thinking of improving your garden with a large area of decking or by paving over most of your lawn, then stop, and think again. Gardens with a lot of paving and concrete and other hard materials are sterile to wildlife, so if you are keen to see wild birds on the bird table or to hear a hedgehog rooting around a pile of leaves, then leave your garden looking as natural as possible.
Be careful with chemicals and pesticides which you may use to encourage plant growth or deter pests like slugs and greenfly. Song thrushes, frogs, toads and newts thrive on a diet of slugs and snails and ladybirds like nothing better than a meal of greenfly. These days, in good garden centres or the large supermarkets, you can often buy more eco-friendly alternatives which won’t harm wildlife.
Everybody likes a tidy garden but leave some areas which will attract animals and birds to your patch. Leave a small pile of logs under or behind some shrubs or create a tunnel out of ceramic piping and cover with vegetation to encourage small animals to settle there. You could set up an insect house on the trunk of a tree or nailed to your garden fence to encourage beetles and bees to make a home. Insects are often the first rung of the food chain and, if there are plenty of insects in your garden, you will find plenty of birds coming to visit too.