On the Wild Side
You may be wondering how on earth a garden that attracts wildlife can be more productive? Well, think about it. Hedges, shrubs and nectar rich plants will provide not only feeding areas for wildlife but also hibernation sites for such things as ladybirds, lacewings and other beneficial insects that prey on many garden pests. This helps reduce the need to spray for aphids. Insecticides often kill many of these beneficial insects as well and are best avoided where possible. In fact in my own garden, although aphids appear on many ornamental plants, they never achieve high populations that require spraying and are easily kept in check naturally by the resident wildlife. This natural control is the one that works best and working with nature and not against her is not only less expensive, but results in more flowers and fruit.
If your garden is fairly new and not yet fully established, nest-boxes are a valuable addition for birds, bats and even insects to breed within the garden. Different nest-boxes suit different birds and other animals. For example, hole-nesting birds will appreciate hole-nesting boxes, bats on the other hand want specially adapted boxes and these can be purchased or even made for little expense. Encouraging both will reduce harmful garden pests within the garden. It goes without saying that the web of life in the garden is very complex and dividing its inhabitants into friends and foes sounds a good idea, but in reality each animal is serving a useful purpose from nature's point of view. That ground beetle that you crush underfoot, is a voracious eater of slugs. Wasps, to take another example, consume a great quantity of other insects that gardeners consider pests, bees, both social and solitary, pollinate our fruit. So as you can see, there is no simple dividing line. I well remember the comment of a well known 'gardening expert' - "If moves slowly enough, step on it, if it doesn't leave it - it will probably kill something else." So the idea of 'pests' is entirely subjective.
Having covered some of the general points to consider, I will now move on to describe in more detail the sort of plants and habitats that attract wildlife to the garden. Firstly, many gardens
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