In the garden: How to create habitats within your garden

No Mow May is upon us, and there is an opportunity to put the lawnmower aside and simply watch the grass grow and whatever else pops up in between.

It can be a bit daunting, particularly if you like order and neatness, but it’s worthwhile all the same, and interesting to observe what makes an appearance among the grass.

If your lawn is very weedy, then there may be plenty of daisies, buttercups, dandelions, and clover, to produce some colour and come alive with pollinators.

Then there is also the possibility of field orchids appearing, ox eye daises, vetch and so much more. Letting the grass grow brings a whole new level of interest to the lawn.

Creating habitat in your garden will increase its biodiversity and health and there are many ways of achieving this. The space can be large or small, we can all do our bit to help nature within the garden.

Insects are having a hard time of it over the last number of years, with lots of decline, much of it attributed to chemical use and loss of habitat.

Creating some space for nature to thrive can contribute to reversing this trend, and it can look interesting and improve the overall health of our own gardens in the process.

Creating a dead hedge is a great way of putting woody prunings to good use, and it looks good, creating an instant wall so it can be used to create screening within the garden.

To maintain the width of the dead hedge, use wooden posts in pairs at intervals of 1-2 metres. These can be used to stack the woody material along the length required.

The pile will naturally decompose over time and so it can be continuously added to, providing a useful resource for reusing woody materials on-site.

Building a log pile wall is an attractive feature within the garden and a great habitat for insects and hedgehogs also. It can be a wood pile that will be used in time to provide heating, but while it is drying out it looks great and increases diversity in the garden.

No Mow May, as mentioned earlier, gives an opportunity to allow flowering of wild flowers in the lawn, providing a food source for insects, and looking good in the process.

If an area is let grow for the month of May, it is a good idea to mow a path through if the area is large, as this allows access and indicates the area is being left to grow long with purpose.

Planting native plants as part of the garden is a great way of ing wildlife. Cow parsley is the classic example at this time of year, bringing some wild elements into the garden.

Nettles are another great plant for wildlife, with butterflies and moths laying their eggs on the under-surface of the leaves. They are said to more than 40 different species of insect.

Creating a compost heap is a great way of recycling green waste materials on-site, creating nourishment for the soil in the process. It also enhances the corner of the garden where it is located as it is full of beneficial insects and microbes working hard at breaking down the green and brown waste into friable crumbly compost when ready for use.

If you are getting really creative, then a dead hedge could be used to enclose a compost heap.

Creating a pond is one of the most rewarding and nature friendly elements for the garden. It brings a myriad of additional aquatic life with it, from frogs and newts to dragonflies and damselflies, and is teeming with life throughout the year.

Installing a bug hotel is one of the simplest features that can be included in the garden to help insect populations, and they look great too.

A simple feature filled with different textured materials that insects can overwinter in or make a home, kids just love these and they can be as large or small as you have space for.

A pallet can be used and filled with different material - bamboo canes, cones, straw, hay, branches and twigs, pebbles, or sand. Also, the wall- mounted hotels make an interesting talking point on a sunny, sheltered wall in the garden.

By making some room for nature to flourish in the garden, we can help to bring things back into balance.

When nature is in balance, then pests and disease do not pose so many problems as natural predators are in existence to keep things in check.

Aphids as a pest of young new plants are kept at bay when the populations of ladybirds are healthy, as the larvae of ladybirds feed on aphids.

To maintain ladybirds in a garden setting, ensure that they have somewhere to overwinter - old stems or a bug hotel - and a good variety of plants in the herbaceous layer.

They feed on aphids, scale insects, mealy bugs and beetle eggs, keeping the populations of all of these insects in check.

We need to change our approach, relax our attitude and integrate nature into our gardening practices as it will make our lives easier and more rewarding. Ultimately, it will be better for the health of plants and the microclimate that we create in our own gardens.

We can have all of the resources within our garden to create a closed system where we can recycle and reuse everything within it for the good of the soil and plants.

That could be making compost or compost teas to feed the soil, making garlic spray to deter slugs, or using plant material like hazel rods to stake plants.

It takes some planning and we all have different areas that we are interested in pursuing, but it is worth considering and adapting how we approach our gardening practices.

Happy habitat creation!