Guest Blog – Jacinta Walton
If you have ever wondered where to start when creating your own garden for wildlife, our guest blog may give you a little inspitation, to try a few ideas, and enjoy the reward. This is what Jacinta had to to say:
So a bit of info about our garden; we moved into our house 5 years ago and the garden was just a rectangle of lawn with some bare patio areas surrounded by mostly concrete based wooden fencing. We knew that we wanted to create a wildlife friendly garden full of flowers, so about a year later we set to work. We had put feeders out for the birds but initially had no takers as there was no shelter or safe space for them in our garden.
Since then we have put in an archway which is now covered in honeysuckle along with a few small trees. The birds love to hide in the honeysuckle and hop around amongst all the ground cover plants. They even keep the aphids under control now! The lawn has been reduced by about two thirds in size – but there is still enough left for a trampoline and slide as we have two small children!
Two years ago my husband spotted a couple of hedgehogs in the front garden and so he made two holes in our fully fenced in garden to help our garden become part of the hedgehog highway. This month I borrowed my parent’s wildlife camera to see if we were getting any visitors at night and to our delight we discovered that they were visiting every night! We think that we have both a male and female visiting regularly and so hopefully we’ll capture some hoglets on camera this summer!
We have loved reading about Jacinta’s garden, and will be crossing our green fingers for hoglets this year!
If you would like to learn more about what is in your garden, how to encourage wildlife, and identify what you find, please take a look at our nature guides designed to make nature spotting a fun and inclusive!