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The most successful gardens work with nature to create natural environments in which jobs such as pollination and pest control are left to the wildlife. In this definitive guide, Alan Titchmarsh shows how to create natural ecosystems in your garden to encourage beneficial insects, birds and other wildlife and establish the best environment in which your garden will thrive.

About the Author

Originally trained at Hertfordshire College of Horticulture and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Alan Titchmarsh is the author of over 40 books about gardening, including How to be a Gardener Book 1: Back to Basics, the fastest-selling of all time in the genre, and the bestselling The Kitchen Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Fruit and Veg. He writes for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, and is gardening correspondent for the Daily Express and Sunday Express. A frequent broadcaster, Alan has covered The Chelsea Flower Show for the BBC for over 25 years, he has a seasonal daily chat show on ITV, and a weekly show on Radio 2.

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Published in 2011 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, a Random House Group Company

The right of Alan Titchmarsh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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COMMISSIONING EDITOR: Lorna Russell
PROJECT EDITOR: Caroline McArthur
PRODUCTION: David Brimble

COMMISSIONING EDITOR: Sue Gordon
SERIES EDITOR: Polly Boyd
SERIES ART EDITOR: Robin Whitecross
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Julia Cady
EDITOR: Anna Kruger
DESIGNER: Louise Turpin
ILLUSTRATIONS by Julia Cady, Lizzie Harper, Janet Tanner
PHOTOGRAPHS by Jonathan Buckley except where credited otherwise here
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT & SERIES DESIGN: Elizabeth Mallard-Shaw, Sharon Cluett

Introduction

Gardening is one of the best and most fulfilling activities on earth, but it can sometimes seem complicated and confusing. The answers to problems can usually be found in books, but big fat gardening books can be rather daunting. Where do you start? How can you find just the information you want without wading through lots of stuff that is not appropriate to your particular problem? Well, a good index is helpful, but sometimes a smaller book devoted to one particular subject fits the bill better – especially if it is reasonably priced and if you have a small garden where you might not be able to fit in everything suggested in a larger volume.

The How to Garden books aim to fill that gap – even if sometimes it may be only a small one. They are clearly set out and written, I hope, in a straightforward, easy-to-understand style. I don’t see any point in making gardening complicated, when much of it is based on common sense and observation. (All the key techniques are explained and illustrated, and I’ve included plenty of tips and tricks of the trade.)

There are suggestions on the best plants and the best varieties to grow in particular situations and for a particular effect. I’ve tried to keep the information crisp and to the point so that you can find what you need quickly and easily and then put your new-found knowledge into practice. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Latin names of plants. They are there to make sure you can find the plant as it will be labelled in the nursery or garden centre, but where appropriate I have included common names, too. Forgetting a plant’s name need not stand in your way when it comes to being able to grow it.

Above all, the How to Garden books are designed to fill you with passion and enthusiasm for your garden and all that its creation and care entails, from designing and planting it to maintaining it and enjoying it. For more than fifty years gardening has been my passion, and that initial enthusiasm for watching plants grow, for trying something new and for just being outside pottering has never faded. If anything I am keener on gardening now than I ever was and get more satisfaction from my plants every day. It’s not that I am simply a romantic, but rather that I have learned to look for the good in gardens and in plants, and there is lots to be found. Oh, there are times when I fail – when my plants don’t grow as well as they should and I need to try harder. But where would I rather be on a sunny day? Nowhere!

The How to Garden handbooks will, I hope, allow some of that enthusiasm – childish though it may be – to rub off on you, and the information they contain will, I hope, make you a better gardener, as well as opening your eyes to the magic of plants and flowers.

Introducing wildlife gardening

With their wide range of plants to provide food and shelter for wildlife, gardens have become an increasingly important refuge for insects, birds and animals as more and more wild habitats disappear. Our gardens can offer fantastic opportunities to get close to the natural world, and many creatures can readily be persuaded to take up residence in them. A wildlife garden is rewarding, and easy to get going, and can be just as thrilling for some as an exotic holiday (not to mention kinder to the environment and your bank balance). And it’s right outside your door, for 365 days of the year.

What is wildlife gardening?

Practically all gardens attract some kind of wildlife, and most gardeners wouldn’t want it any other way. The activities of blackbirds, blue tits and insects such as butterflies and bees really bring a garden to life. There are, admittedly, a few drawbacks such as caterpillar-nibbled plants and stolen fruit, but most of us are happy to put up with these in exchange for the rich environment that a garden alive with wild creatures offers.

Changing times

Until the mid-20th century, the whole idea of wildlife gardening might have seemed puzzling. The countryside was where wildlife belonged, conservation was scarcely necessary and gardens were no place for most wild creatures. It was just taken for granted that gardeners would wipe out, by fair means or foul, any ‘pests’ that interfered with their crops, without much thought for any unintended consequences.

Since the 1940s, changing farming practices and increasing development have left fewer and fewer toeholds for rural wildlife. A huge percentage of the best wildlife habitats has been lost for ever to roads, buildings, car parks and vast, featureless areas of chemically managed agriculture. Birds and animals that were very familiar only a generation ago, including hedgehogs, house sparrows, song thrushes and cuckoos, are now in serious decline. Fortunately, the value of wild habitats is now recognized and gardeners’ attitudes to wildlife are changing.

Gardens to the rescue

With their diversity of plants, their ponds, hedges, flower borders and undisturbed nooks and crannies, gardens add up to a vast area of wildlife-friendly land, in both the town and the country. They have rather unexpectedly stepped into the breach as a refuge for some of the wild creatures that are being squeezed out by pesticides and habitat loss.

More and more gardeners are also discovering what a privilege it is to be a self-appointed wildlife warden. Driven by the wish to offer help, or simply by the joy of watching and getting to know the creatures that share our gardens, we are learning to adapt our gardening habits to accommodate them, and finding that they respond to the slightest encouragement. So why wait?

Ten steps towards a wildlife garden

Stop using chemical pesticides and weedkillers; these may harm wildlife.

Replace a section of fencing with a mixed native hedge (see here).

Make a compost heap (see here).

Plant at least one tree (see here).

Increase numbers of bee and butterfly plants like Eryngium, shown here (see also here).

Plant some winter-flowering nectar plants (see here).

Let a small area of grass grow longer.

Leave some fallen leaves to rot down naturally.

Build a log pile.

Delay cutting down most of your perennial plants until spring.

Welcoming wildlife: the basics

Whether gardeners or not, many people enjoy a touch of nature in the garden. Feeding birds has become hugely popular, and may help explain increases in the populations of great tits, goldfinches and great spotted woodpeckers. Garden ponds are important habitats for frogs and other amphibians, and it’s exciting when spawn arrives in the spring. A visiting or resident hedgehog is a delight, while a summer garden seems incomplete without its butterflies and bees.

The garden’s support system

Wildlife-watching can be very absorbing while we’re in the garden, or when looking out of the window as we stand at the kitchen sink or talk on the phone. But the vital support network that sustains a good wildlife garden is something that we may not be very aware of. Indeed, we may not be able to see it at all – at least, not without a strong hand-lens or even a microscope. A healthy garden wildlife population relies on a whole complex web of interdependent relationships between plants and the many creatures – tiny or large – that depend upon them and upon each other. It’s a continuous daily drama in which the roles of soil bacteria, mites, fungi and aphids are just as important as those of woodpeckers, frogs and hedgehogs. Each member of the cast supports others, and each depends in turn on others somewhere else in the web. The best kind of wildlife gardening involves creating the right conditions for this multi-layered support network, while disturbing it as little as possible.

Multi-tasking features in the garden

Plants and water features that fulfil more than one role at a time – or better still, at more than one time – are a wildlife gardener’s best friends. They really do earn their space, especially in a small garden. Teasels and thistles, for example, supply both summer nectar for butterflies and bees, and winter seeds for birds. Cotoneasters and mature ivy plants offer nectar, berries and perhaps a place to nest; a crab apple tree has all these and may also attract aphids for blue tits to feed on. Eventually its topmost branches might serve as a perch for a blackbird or greenfinch to sing from. A pond is definitely among the best multi-purpose wildlife facilities. Not just a potential breeding habitat for amphibians, dragonflies and many insects, it also functions as a drinking place for birds and mammals, as well as a home for plants of water and wetland.

Dead vegetation is just as important for many insects and other invertebrates as living plants. Leave piles of dead wood in the garden for beetles, woodlice and centipedes to feed and shelter in. Like all plant matter, it will eventually rot away as part of nature’s ingenious recycling scheme, sustaining fungi and other plants in the process.

Friends or foes?

Open your arms and your garden to wildlife and you become a potential host for many delightful creatures. It’s not their fault if some of them – from foxes and rabbits to pigeons and mice – see your garden as an opportunity to eat things you’d prefer they didn’t, or to raise their families in an inconvenient place. Like a lot of things that are worth doing, wildlife gardening isn’t straightforward, and you will often have to make difficult decisions in steering the tricky course between the needs of wildlife and your own. Only you can decide where to draw the line, but before you resort to desperate measures to get rid of them, it’s a good idea to try one of the many simple and harmless deterrents (see here). These aren’t foolproof but they may be all that’s necessary to persuade the miscreants to go somewhere else instead.

The place of plants

Plants form the basis of the garden’s ability to support and sustain wild creatures, and, in short, the more the merrier. Without plants there would be no wildlife. Gardens have a unique status here, with a variety of plants large and small, from trees to grasses, that may have their origins pretty well anywhere in the world. If you think you don’t have many plants in your garden, try counting the different kinds of shrubs and border plants, not forgetting the apple tree, the herbs perhaps … and that ivy on the fence. Remember to include the weeds, too! You may be very surprised at the total. And somewhere out there are various creatures – from caterpillars and bugs to birds and mammals – that find a use for most of them.

Go native

A proportion of plant-eating insects, such as moth caterpillars, will eat a surprisingly wide range of plants and appear not to mind whether they are native or not. But it’s a good idea to plant at least some natives in your wildlife garden because certain insect species are a little pickier. Native trees, in particular, tend to support a wider range of insects than most of the more exotic non-natives, so try to include one, at least (see here).

Natural pest control

In an ideal world herbivores would eat only weeds and predators would eat only pests. Of course, life isn’t quite like that, but in some cases things do work to the gardener’s advantage. Aphids, such as greenfly and blackfly, make a nuisance of themselves by sucking sap from your plants, but they are eaten in large numbers by many other creatures, from blue tits and wrens to hoverfly larvae and ladybirds. Caterpillars, plump from nibbling your Brussels sprouts and peas, are taken by many parent birds for their young, or are parasitized by certain wasps. Song thrushes are well known for finding snails particularly appetizing, and hedgehogs eat slugs.

These natural pest-control processes can be tremendously beneficial in the garden, but wildlife gardening entails creating and managing a whole habitat, while trying to maintain a natural balance, rather than targeting individual creatures. However, the richer your habitat becomes, the less likely you are to have overwhelming pest problems as each species finds its place in the complex web where one creature lives off another.

Problems with pesticides

It is when we disrupt the garden’s web that trouble can start. Some chemical controls, for example, have caused serious damage. The most notorious, DDT, was used widely, from the 1940s to the 1970s, as an insecticide by farmers and gardeners. Its persistence allowed it to make its way up the food chain in increasing concentrations, and it began to accumulate permanently in the bodies of larger predators such as birds of prey. Some could no longer breed successfully because the effect of the chemical was to make their eggs too thin-shelled to be viable. The DDT used in those decades is detectable in our oceans even today. Fortunately, its use – and that of many other persistent pesticides – has long since been banned, but the principle still stands: sometimes the unwanted effects of chemical controls aren’t understood until it’s too late. It seems no coincidence that more garden chemicals every year are being withdrawn from sale on safety grounds, and all of us may have to get used to alternatives eventually.

Another reason for laying off the pesticides is that they are nearly all non-specific, so they can kill useful predators as well as the pests. Pest populations recover quickly because pests tend to be resilient (which is why they’re considered pests), and damaging the predator populations just encourages the pests to stay one step ahead.

Giving up pesticides

If you have been a regular pesticide user but have resolved to chuck away the chemicals, then you can expect the first season or two to test your nerve. It takes a while for a balanced ecosystem to evolve, and there will probably be the occasional boom in slug or aphid numbers along the way. It’s easy to panic unnecessarily about garden pests and diseases, though. Deterrents and natural pest control methods will help (see here), and healthy plants will often shrug off problems by themselves. Whatever happens, stick with it and try not to reach for the spray in a weak moment. It’s a good feeling to know exactly what has gone into your apples and lettuces, and you and your garden wildlife will probably never look back.

Once you have made the decision to go pesticide-free, make sure you dispose safely of any garden chemicals remaining in your shed or garage. Most local authorities offer special facilities where you can take such hazardous waste, and should be able to advise you.

Laid-back gardening

Not using pesticides is just one key example of the principle of ‘live and let live’ – such an important part of wildlife gardening and an attitude worth cultivating. Try to develop a more relaxed approach to the garden (see here) and be a little less tidy. Many creatures are easily disturbed from hiding places by over-zealous trimming and sweeping: frequently, the only encouragement they need to settle in with you is to be left alone. Respect the wildlife you have invited into your garden, and encourage others to do the same. Get into the habit of watching quietly and unobtrusively, without making sudden movements or noises, and the birds and animals will get used to you, becoming tamer and more trusting. Your garden will feel like a calmer, more soothing place – one that is more attractive to wildlife and therapeutic for people, too. Indeed, the benefits of a few minutes’ quiet nature watching at the beginning or at the end of a hectic day are very apparent to anyone who has done it.

Wildlife-friendly design

Design and wildlife are sometimes assumed to be at opposite ends of the gardening spectrum. They certainly needn’t be, but planning a garden that is as close as possible to ideal for you and your wildlife does takes a bit of thought. A well-designed space that is practical and enjoyable to use, easy on the eye, but also appealing to the birds and bees is perfectly achievable, and it’s worth getting it right. A little planning and forethought mean you will not only do a better job for wildlife, but you’ll end up with a garden that meets your own needs, too.

Designing a wildlife garden isn’t so very different from designing any other kind of garden. It’s largely a practical matter of making the best use of the space for what you want your particular garden to do and be. It’s about creating variety and interest. It’s also about solving problems, from a damp patch to a grim view, or how to make a small space appear bigger. And, of course, it’s about making the garden look as attractive and inviting as you possibly can.

Key points for planning

Take your design cues from the style and proportions of your house and the nature of its surroundings.

Divide the space so that it can’t all be seen at once.

Plan paths so that you can walk out into the garden and return by a different route. This is usually possible even in a tiny space.

Explore the possibilities of creating different moods by using areas of light and shade.

Don’t use too many different materials. Natural or recycled materials will suit the informal feel of a wildlife garden best.

Repeat at least one key feature – perhaps an archway or a structural shrub, or planted containers – to give a sense of unity.

Before you finalize your plan, picture to yourself how the garden will look in each season of the year.

Take account of existing wildlife in the garden, and try not to disturb established habitats more than necessary. Once you drive a particular creature away, it may not come back.

Plan the planting in vertical layers, for maximum interest and maximum wildlife appeal: for example, follow spring bulbs with herbaceous plants that will cover the ground beneath shrubs or trees.

What kind of garden?

The first thing to ask yourself when you begin to plan is how committed you want to be. Is your ideal more wildlife than garden, or more garden than wildlife? Are you more a wildlife warden than a gardener, content to let nature take over your garden and intervening only to improve it as a wildlife habitat – treating it, in other words, as a small-scale nature reserve? Or are you first and foremost a keen gardener, but willing to allow nature into your plot as long as it doesn’t make it too untidy or threaten your vegetables and roses? Most of us stand somewhere in between. Getting the balance right, for both you and your wildlife, is a key part of developing a good design.

A VARIED WILDLIFE GARDEN FOR ALL-YEAR INTEREST
10 × 15M (33 × 50FT)

About a third of the garden is a wild area with a pond, wildflowers in longer grass, and native trees and shrubs. Flower and shrub borders have a wide variety of plants to please insects, birds and gardeners alike. Mown paths create glades and views, and the enclosed kitchen garden includes a shed and compost area.

Existing features

When you begin creating a wildlife garden, you won’t normally be having to start from scratch. There are few gardens that contain no wildlife at all, and unless you have a brand-new plot you will usually be able to build on what’s already there and include at least some existing features in your design. It may be possible – and will be less expensive and disruptive – to renovate and reuse existing hard landscaping such as paving or a pergola. A tough border perennial that is obviously happy in your plot may be worth splitting up to include in a new planting scheme, or there may be a gaunt old shrub that shelters ladybirds in its cracks and crevices in winter, and provides summer nectar for butterflies and bees. Even if it’s no longer a thing of beauty, keep it for the time being and replace or hard prune it only when you have created some alternative locations for its inhabitants.

Start by taking a hard, critical look at your plot, and perhaps by roughly sketching an outline plan. Plot the boundaries, the house with its doors and windows, and existing features that are difficult or impossible to move, or that you may want to keep: access gates, inspection covers, an oil tank, paving and steps, a shed or greenhouse perhaps, trees and certain other plants, hedges, and so on. This is the time to record views out of the garden, noting which you would like to keep and where you need screening. Also, notice the limiting characteristics of particular parts of the garden: climatic factors such as sun, shade and windy areas; changes of level; damp and dry areas and points where underground services may run. Record all these features carefully: you’ll need to work round them when planning your layout and again when choosing the plants.

The second part of the planning process is to make a wish list of features you would like to have in the garden: a seating area or two, overhead screening or shade, a place to dry the washing, a compost heap, a pond and bird-feeding station, a mini-woodland or meadow, a butterfly border and so on. Plan the garden not only to attract wildlife, but also to maximize opportunities for watching the birds and animals that may arrive – both in the garden and from the house. Include at least a couple of places to sit, perhaps at different times of day. A well-chosen seat or arbour is not just a practical addition, it also makes an effective focal point at the end of a view.

Height! The all-important third dimension is easy to overlook when planning a garden. The positioning of trees and of structures such as arches and pergolas, which create height instantly, can make or break a design.

Continuity in the border

One of the most important aspects of any planting design is to keep a garden interesting throughout the year, with no dull interludes when there is little to look at. The majority of wildflowers bloom for a relatively short period, but there are many border plants (listed below) that both have a long season of interest and are also attractive to many forms of wildlife, so try and include some of these plants and your garden won’t have an ‘off’ season.

Acanthus

Allium cristophii

Anthemis tinctoria ‘E.C. Buxton’

Aster × frikartii ‘Mönch’

Diascia

Echinacea purpurea

Erigeron karvinskianus

Euphorbia polychroma

Geranium ‘Ann Folkard’

Geranium ‘Rozanne’

Geranium sanguineum

Penstemon ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’

Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’

A COTTAGE-STYLE GARDEN WITH SECLUDED POND
15 × 7.5M (50 × 25FT)

Although not large, this garden is divided into three quite different areas. Near the house is a small brick terrace with flower borders and a lawn. From here a grass path leads through a woodland area with a ‘wilder’ feel to a wildlife pond with a summerhouse. Two climber-clad pergolas make focal points, with seats beneath them for wildlife-watching.

Rethinking your garden for wildlife

Turning your garden into a better place for wildlife is just about the easiest adaptation you could make, involving next to no trouble or expense. What you may need to do, though, is to question the reasons why you garden in the way that you do, and imagine how it would be if you made some changes. Conventional gardening embraces many practices from a bygone age. Some still make perfect sense, but for others the writing is on the wall and it’s time to change.

The tidy gardener

For some people, gardening is just another chore, perhaps with little pleasure attached. Often, the people who look at it this way tend to want their gardens to be just as neat and clean as their houses, with everything mown, swept and weeded and not a leaf out of place. Would-be wildlife gardeners will need to ease themselves gradually out of the parade-ground approach to gardening. And the upside? There’s a strong possibility that you’ll start to find your garden a whole lot more interesting as well as enjoying it more.

Lawns

A bowling-green lawn can look great as part of a garden design, setting off planting perfectly. But if you’re not obsessive about your lawn, you can easily let go of the notion that the whole thing has to be mown within an inch of its life every week, and sprayed regularly to keep it free from weeds and moss. Mowing less frequently will often mean healthier grass that shades out the competition better. Try letting a small, clearly defined area grow into a flowering lawn (see here). Insects and birds are sure to like it, and perhaps you will too.

What is a weed?

Many of us have been unwittingly conditioned to see weeds as one of the chief evils of the garden, but it’s worth stopping to think where you stand in relation to your weeds. Nobody wants to see their beans or strawberries smothered by nettles and docks, and you won’t find many devotees of bindweed or ground elder. But not everything that arrives in your garden uninvited is to be sent packing. Being a bit more relaxed about weeds can lead to some pleasant surprises and worthwhile discoveries.

Different gardeners’ tolerance of weeds will vary, and you must decide what you can put up with. Many gardeners wouldn’t entertain rosebay willowherb, for instance, which can be rather rampant if you don’t cut it down before it sets seed. (The white form, Chamerion angustifolium ‘Album’, is better behaved.) But if you look among its lower leaves in summer you may find the remarkable caterpillars of the exquisite elephant hawkmoth, complete with ‘eyes’ and a ‘trunk’. Such discoveries may make you view at least some of your weeds in a different light.

Know your seedlings

It’s well worth getting to know the commoner garden weeds at the seedling stage. If you recognize one as a potential troublemaker, you can tweak it out in a second, whereas if you leave it to grow and put down roots you may have a major digging job on your hands. Many wildflowers and garden plants (see here) will self-sow just as enthusiastically as weeds, and are frequently treated as such. But again, learn to recognize as many as you can at an early stage and perhaps learn to leave alone those you can’t. Wholesale hoeing in the interests of neatness can rob both you and your insect population of a host of interesting flowers. Self-sowers also have a habit of putting themselves in just the right place, where they often make excellent, healthy plants – so don’t spurn these free gifts just because you haven’t planted them yourself.

Formal hedging such as yew and box looks undeniably smart when kept crisply clipped, but not all hedges have to be so tightly controlled. Hedging plants such as hawthorn, blackthorn and dog rose will flower and fruit more abundantly under a relaxed trimming regime, and will be better for wildlife.

Green manure

Fallow land will generally be in better heart if it’s kept covered with greenery. You can plant seeds of so-called ‘green manures’, such as grazing rye, winter tares and phacelia, but young annual weed plants do the job almost as well, and you don’t have to bother to sow them. Don’t leave them long enough to set seed, though. In many parts of the garden you can simply dig them in, a couple of weeks before you want to plant the area. They will add humus and minerals to the soil.

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