As winter approaches, many of us start clearing leaves and tidying up our gardens. But these jobs can remove vital winter habitats for wildlife, particularly with increasingly volatile weather conditions.
Author
- Kat Hamill
Senior Lecturer in Zoology, Nottingham Trent University
Residential gardens cover 4.6% of Great Britain's land area - over three times the size of the UK's National Nature Reserves - so they are important refuges for our biodiversity, particularly in urban areas.
There are many things you can do to make your garden wildlife-friendly, from installing a pond to establishing a compost heap or planting native, flowering plants and trees.
However, research has shown that there are obstacles to householders engaging in wildlife-friendly gardening practices, such as costs and the level of effort or knowledge involved. The effort needed to maintain a garden appears to discourage people to such an extent that almost half (42%) of residential gardens in the UK are now paved over. It even appears a growing number would prefer to cover their gardens in plastic artificial grass rather than (heaven forbid) have an unkempt lawn.
Whether you're motivated by the thought of encouraging more butterflies into your garden next year or just more time curled up on the sofa, wildlife-friendly gardening can involve less effort. Here is my argument for why you should do less in the garden this autumn.
Leave the leaves
Leave some leaf litter, raked into a pile in a quiet corner for hedgehogs to use as nesting material for hibernation. Beetles, spiders, and other invertebrates will also shelter in leaf litter - in turn, providing food for foraging birds like robins and blackbirds.
However, leaf litter doesn't only provide shelter or hunting ground - it can also be an important food source itself. Detritivores, such as woodlice and millipedes , feed on decomposing plant matter and, in doing so, play a crucial role in nutrient cycling.
Winter refuge
Dedicate a patch to fallen twigs or a log pile.
Stacking logs creates nooks and crannies, with the centre and bottom of the pile staying wetter and rotting quicker while the top dries out. Although this does involve leaving the warm embrace of the living room, it could give you an easy place to abandon those leftover wood cuts and sweep loose twigs into.
The damp conditions in a log pile are ideal for beetles and woodlice, while ladybirds and butterflies tend to occupy the drier parts. These invertebrates then act as prey for other species, such as amphibians, small mammals, and birds. In this way, a log pile provides a variety of niches, offering refuge and food for a whole wildlife community.
Deadwood habitats are also vital for Europe's largest beetle: the stag beetle . They spend most of their life as a grub, feeding on rotten wood for several years, before emerging as an adult.
Finding cover as the temperature falls is particularly important for ectotherms, such as amphibians and reptiles, which rely on their surroundings to regulate their body temperature. Frogs, toads, newts, and lizards hide away under log piles, rocks, and vegetation - entering a state of dormancy known as brumation, which is similar to hibernation in mammals.
Procrastinate the pruning
Hang fire on deadheading spent flowers and cutting back perennial stems until the following spring. The seed heads are an important food source for birds, such as sparrows and finches , as well as small mammals like mice and voles. The hollow stems also provide shelter for solitary bees .
If you're lucky enough to have a fruit tree in your garden, spare a few windfalls. Fallen apples and pears will be eaten by mammals, from small rodents through to badgers, and birds, like thrushes and tits. They are also a late-season source of sugar for butterflies, ants, and other invertebrates.
Resist the urge to tidy the garden on the first sunny day of spring. Many animals only emerge from dormancy once the days start to get longer or temperatures consistently rise. Early gardening may expose over-wintering wildlife to late-season frosts . This could also include delaying mowing the lawn, to leave the dandelions and clover as an early source of nectar for bees.
By simply doing less, we can promote habitat complexity and help increase species diversity in our gardens. So, we should embrace a "messy" garden as the new norm - and feel a little less guilty if we don't get around to ticking the gardening off our weekend chore list.
Kat Hamill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
