How to attract wildlife to your garden

If you want to attract wildlife to your garden, do it in this order: water, food, shelter, planting. Most people start with a bird feeder and wonder why not much happens. Water brings more species into a garden faster than anything else, and it costs nothing.

Size is close to irrelevant. A balcony with a shallow dish, a pot of marjoram and a stack of sticks behind the door will support more life than a large lawn with nothing else in it. What matters is that the resources are there consistently, and that something is available in every month of the year.

• Start with water
• Making a bird friendly garden
• Planting for pollinators through the year
• Shelter, and the value of mess
• Put the sprays down
• What to do this weekend
• Frequently asked questions

Start with water

In hot weather, water is more important than food. Birds need it for drinking and for bathing, which keeps feathers in condition, and in a dry August there is often nowhere else for them to get it.

A proper bird bath is ideal. A shallow dish on the ground, topped up daily, does most of the same work. Two rules make it useful rather than decorative: keep it shallow, no more than a few centimetres at the deepest, with a sloping side or a stone in the middle so small birds and insects can get out again; and put it somewhere with cover nearby but not directly overhead, so a bathing bird can see what is coming.

Keep it out of full sun if you can, or it evaporates by lunchtime. Change the water every day or two. Standing water goes stale and spreads the same diseases a dirty feeder does.

Making a bird friendly garden

Three things turn a garden with birds passing through into a bird friendly garden they actually live in: reliable food, safe approaches, and somewhere to nest.

Feeders. Match the feeder to the birds you want. Seed mixes and sunflower hearts bring finches and sparrows. Peanuts and suet suit tits and woodpeckers. Robins and blackbirds feed on the ground, so they want mealworms or fruit on a table or tray rather than a hanging tube.

Hygiene is not optional. Dirty feeders spread disease through a local bird population, and a neglected feeder does more harm than no feeder at all. Clean and dry them regularly, and move the position occasionally so droppings do not build up underneath.

Position for safety. Site a feeder within a few metres of a hedge or shrub so birds can dart into cover, but not so close that a cat can launch from it. Birds will not use an exposed feeder in the middle of a lawn, however good the seed.

Nest boxes. Sheltered spot, out of strong afternoon sun and away from the prevailing wind, ideally facing somewhere between north and east. Away from the busiest part of the garden. Put them up in autumn or winter and they are far more likely to be occupied come spring. Our bird nesting boxes and bird feeders cover most garden species.

Planting for pollinators through the year

The aim is something in flower from the first mild day of the year to the last. Gaps are where pollinators struggle, and the gaps are usually late winter and late autumn rather than midsummer.

Flower shape matters as much as the species. Flat, open flowers suit bees and hoverflies, which cannot reach into anything deep. Tubular flowers suit long-tongued bumblebees and butterflies. A garden with both feeds more insects than a garden with twice as many of one kind.

• Reliable performers: lavender, foxgloves, salvia, buddleia, marjoram and hardy geraniums
• In pots: thyme and rosemary, both of which flower well and take almost no looking after
• The winter gap: ivy, which flowers late and feeds bees emerging in mild spells when nothing else is open

Leave seed heads standing through autumn and winter rather than cutting everything back in October. They feed birds, and the hollow stems shelter insects. The RHS list of wildlife friendly plants is a good place to go deeper.

Shelter, and the value of mess

Tidy gardens are hard to live in. Almost every shelter a small creature needs is something we have been trained to clear away.

A log pile in a quiet corner supports beetles, fungi and insects, and those insects feed the birds. Leaf litter left under hedges and shrubs is where hedgehogs and overwintering insects go. Longer grass in patches, even a strip along a fence, changes what can live in a lawn. A compost heap is already a warm, sheltered habitat, which is one reason to be careful turning it in cold weather.

Hedges do double duty: nesting sites, and safe corridors for moving around without crossing open ground. If you have room for one thing, a hedge beats a fence every time.

The useful mental shift is deciding on a couple of do-not-disturb zones and genuinely leaving them alone, rather than trying to make the whole garden wild.

Put the sprays down

Most pesticides and weedkillers do not distinguish between the thing you are aiming at and everything else, which includes pollinators and the predators that would otherwise be doing your pest control for free.

Physical methods first. Hand weed little and often, which is less work than it sounds if it is little and often. Mulch to suppress weeds and hold moisture, using compost, leaf mould or well-rotted manure, kept clear of plant stems. Use netting, fleece or collars to protect young plants, and copper tape around pots for slugs.

Then let the predators work. Ladybirds, lacewings, hoverflies, frogs and birds between them will handle a great deal of aphid and slug pressure, but only if there is anything left alive to do it. That takes a season to establish, and the first year is the hardest because the predators arrive after the pests.

A perfect leaf is not the goal. A garden with a few chewed leaves and a lot of life in it is working correctly.

What to do this weekend

One job and one habit is enough to start.

• The job: put out water. A dish, a bath, anything shallow with a way out.
• The habit: top it up and change it, daily in summer.
• Next: one pot of pollinator planting, and one corner you agree to stop tidying.
• Then: a feeder near cover, cleaned regularly, and a nest box up before winter.

Everything else follows from those. The rest of what we stock for this sits in Birds & Wildlife.

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Frequently asked questions

How do I make my garden bird friendly?

Water, food and cover, in that order. Put out shallow water and keep it clean and topped up, since in hot or frozen weather it is harder for birds to find than food. Add a feeder matched to the species you want, sited within a few metres of a hedge or shrub so birds can escape into cover, and clean it regularly because dirty feeders spread disease. Then add a nest box in a sheltered spot facing between north and east. Planting for insects underpins all of it, because most garden birds feed their chicks on caterpillars rather than seed.

Can you attract wildlife to a small garden or a balcony?

Yes, and small spaces often do better than large ones because everything is close together. A shallow dish of water, one or two pots of pollinator planting such as marjoram, thyme or lavender, and a small stack of sticks or a log offcut in a corner will bring in bees, hoverflies and, in time, birds. Height helps: a hanging feeder or a wall-mounted box uses space a balcony has spare. The one thing worth avoiding is a bare, swept, hard surface with nothing to shelter in.

When should I put up a bird nesting box?

Autumn or early winter is the best time, several months before the breeding season. Birds use boxes for roosting through cold weather and are far more likely to nest in spring in a box they already know. Choose a sheltered position out of strong afternoon sun and away from the prevailing wind, ideally facing somewhere between north and east, and away from the busiest part of the garden. Do not put it directly above a feeder, as the traffic and the mess both discourage nesting.

What plants attract the most bees and butterflies?

Lavender, marjoram, salvia, hardy geraniums, foxgloves and buddleia are all reliable, and thyme and rosemary work well in pots. More useful than any single plant is having both flower shapes: flat, open flowers for bees and hoverflies that cannot reach into anything deep, and tubular flowers for long-tongued bumblebees and butterflies. Aim for something in flower across the whole season, and add ivy for the late winter gap, when bees emerging in a mild spell often have nothing else open to feed on.

Should I stop tidying the garden for wildlife?

Not entirely, but choose a couple of areas and genuinely leave them. Leaf litter under hedges, longer grass in patches, standing seed heads through winter and a log pile in a quiet corner are where most garden creatures shelter and overwinter, and all four are the things we are usually taught to clear. Avoid heavy pruning of hedges and shrubs during the nesting season, from roughly March to August. The rest of the garden can be as neat as you like without doing any harm.