Spending time in green spaces can lead to real improvements in your life. Being surrounded by life has its benefits, and you can help create your own living space using your own garden. There are many benefits to you and to your environment in creating a space where wildlife can find refuge and food. Here are 4 ways to build the home for nature that your garden might be missing.
By Team Savant
Image: Annie Spratt
Get Wild With It
Rather than cutting down your grass as soon as you have the opportunity, you should consider letting the grass grow long. Long grass is legitimately becoming a very rare habitat for many plants and insects. You can enhance its effects on your garden by using wildflower seeds as well. This can create a beautiful spread of natural flowers which will, in turn, attract and support pollinators. We should all be doing more to help bees and other pollinators, whose numbers have been devastated by changing environments.
Give Birds A Place To Re-Stock
If you are able, then a birdbath is one of the most valuable water fixtures that you can keep in your garden, providing that you’re able to keep it clean. The safe source of drinking water can be a major aid to many birds. Seed feeders and a safe, sheltered place to peck at them can be great, too, especially if you’re using high nutrition seeds like cannabis seeds alongside the more basic bird feed. A birdhouse can offer even better shelter, perhaps even nesting some of your local feathered friends and keeping them safe from predators.
Consider Adding A Pond
If you have the space, money, and inclination, you can go a step further and have a pond installed in your garden. Even small gardens can have tiny ponds which can have huge benefits for the local environment. Keep some aquatic plants in there and it can naturally maintain its own pH balance (though many pond owners will still use bacteria to manage it for them.) This can help support local insects, which in turn feed birds and mammals. It also serves as a watering hole for small mammals, as well as breeding grounds for amphibians.
Offer A Little Shelter
There are plenty of ways that you can provide shelter for mammals, birds, and small animals in your garden, keeping them safe from large predators and from the weather. Building a hedgehog home is perhaps the most elaborate, but also the most useful, since certain animals (including hedgehogs) are becoming more reliant on them as natural shelter becomes more scarce. However, shrubs and bushes also provide shelter that local animals may find valuable during times of need, as well. These plants can also serve as great green walls and privacy screens for your garden, too.
How much you want to open your garden to the outside world is up to you. Pest problems can come with some of the tips above, especially if you grow vegetables. However, everyone can make a little extra space for nature in their garden.