It is a widely held belief that gardening is good for you. It is good exercise, it builds confidence and self-esteem, and it promotes a sense of inner peace like nothing else on earth. In short, it can heal the mind and soothe the soul and really should be handed out in blocks of 1 hour on prescription in place of chemicals and drugs that fool your brain into thinking you are fine.

I am a great believer in gardening for good health, and, having been treated for depression last year, have found my garden the most therapeutic and important element of my healing process.

My garden is an oasis of cool, soft-edged light, filtering through trees and climbers. Gentle sounds of wind chimes and bells ring out through the space, and although I am close to a busy main road, you wouldn't know, for the air is clear and quiet. It is the most peaceful place I know of.

One of the loveliest things about my garden is the abundance of wildlife. In fact, the children of my new neighbour this evening declared how unfair it was that the birds only visit my garden, and not theirs. They wanted to know why this was. The answer is fairly simple. The birds come because I invite them. Not in a Mary Poppins sort of way (no dancing penguins in my garden I'm afraid!!!), but with food, water, nest-sites and places to play!

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LOCAL WILDLIFE DEPENDS NOW MORE THAN EVER ON HOSPITABLE, WILDLIFE-FRIENDLY GARDENS!!!!

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In this review I am going to tell you the basics of how to attract all sorts of wildlife to your garden, and even if you only do one thing, you will be making a difference to wildlife populations in your area. It all helps!

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*****The Great Garden Food Chain*****

Once you get the basics of this, you will realise that chemical intervention is not needed to eradicate certain creeping/crawling fellows who like to eat your cabbages!

Every creature that comes into your garden is generally part of the food chain - bluetits love greenfly, blackbirds love worms and bugs and larvae, as do hedgehogs, who also devour slugs with great pleasure. Frogs help too, to keep my slug population under control. Bats and swifts thrive on the tiny wee insects that hover over your white flowered plants in the evening - we have a family of bats that live somewhere in the vicinity and which, on summer evenings, can now be seen flapping madly about like they have no idea at all of where they're going. Very comical they are. We watch them from the bedroom window or the back door and it's so wonderful to know that they feel welcome in this little space we call our back garden!
Lots of other animals can help to keep the eco system of your garden in check - my favourite is the song thrush. The Thrush, if you're lucky to have one or two about, loves snails, and will leave shells lying on the ground near flat stones where it's battered them to bits to get at the molusc inside. You see, it's all about the food chain to these wonderful creatures that visit us! By making your garden hospitable for these creatures, they gradually help to balance out the overpopulated species (like snails and slugs!) so you don't have to zap them with dodgy chemicals!

The general rule of thumb, then, is that if you attract the smaller creatures, the larger ones will follow.

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*****So, what plants to plant? *****

This really depends on your space, but what I will do is describe to you what I have in my garden that I have found beneficial to local wildlife, and hopefully that will give you some idea as to what to plant.

Honeysuckle - this is one of my favourite climbing plants, it has amazingly scented flowers which attract evening insects, and therefore swifts, moths and bats, and it is always covered in greenfly, which the bluetits adore - they can often be seen hanging upside down from the branches. Birds also eat the red berries during the long winter months.

Buddleia - this is famous for attracting butterflies in the daytime and moths in the evening - AND IT DOES!!!! I have a large purple buddleia in my garden and if the sun is shining its covered in butterflies - the most I counted in one sitting was eleven. Birds love the seeds in the autumn and winter months.

Thyme and Rosemary - Bees adore these two popular garden herbs, and the fact they are easy to grow (just put them in a sunny spot, well drained soil, and a sheltered position, and they will grow quite happily for you!) makes them a perfect choice for the wildlife gardener - they also taste great on potatoes and meat dishes!

Birds Foot Trefoil - this is a wild flower, usually found along hedgerows I think, and I managed to grow some from seed a few years ago (The Organic Seed Company have details of this and other wild seeds, see below for details) - and it is so vigorous, and has tiny little yellow flowers, like miniature sweet peas - birds eat the seeds, and butterflies and moths feed on them, and lay their eggs on the foliage. This is the best plant to attract the rare Blue Butterflies to your garden and I have had the honour of seeing 2 this summer! Well worth the effort!

Clematis is a fast growing climber which is perfect for nesting - sparrows, which have been in decline recently, love to nest here as they are quite communal wee things, and they like to nest quite close to each other.

Other things to try - leave a corner of your garden to grow wild - or plant up a meadow : by mixing cornflower, poppy, daisy, scabious and grass seed together, you can create a meadow effect, which will provide nectar for bees and butterflies as well as seeds later in the season for birds.

Nettles are great in the wildlife garden for many reasons - they can be added to a compost heap to speed up the composting process; they can be left in a bucket of rainwater to make a nutritional feed for plants and fruit trees, and they are also perfect for butterflies to lay their eggs on.

Apparently they make good soup, but I must admit that despite having a recipe, I've never been brave enough to try that particular delicacy!

Flowers with white blooms, like Nicotiana (the tobacco plant) attract evening moths and insects, which in turn attract insect eating creatures like bats and swifts.

I love to grow Lavender, for the bees, and roses, because they're beautiful, and calendula (marigold) because it's great in salads, it is wonderful in healing terms, and it looks so wonderfully cheerful, popping up all over the place with it's saucer shaped orange blooms.

I think really, there has to be a balance between growing plants that are good for wildlife, and growing plants that you love, and when you have that balance right, you keep everybody happy!

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*****Hedges*****

Hedges are great, not just to keep unwanted visitors out, but to give creatures a place to live. I have planted a hawthorn hedge down the boundary line of my back garden, and this is a perfect hedging plant. It is quite thorny and therefore cat-proof, so birds can nest safely in it - the lower areas are perfect for frogs, toads, hedgehogs and field mice, it has lovely white, scented blossom in May, and produces heaps of red berries that will keep birds satisfied in the dark winter months.

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*****Water*****

If you want to attract any sort of wildlife to your garden , water is the surest way to do it. Have a pond if you can, as this will bring you frogs and maybe even newts - but even if you don't have room for this, put out shallow dishes of water: you will find tat not only do birds visit your garden for a drink, but hedgehogs too. Always make sure that if you have deep water (for example, in a pond) that you make a shallow end, so that if any creatures fall in, they can get out again.
I have a pond, inherited from my mum's garden, which within 2 days of filling, was visited by frogs. It was so easy to pop in, I dug the whole and settled rocks around it within the space of an afternoon last summer, and it is teeming with all sorts of water life now, including frogs, water beetles, and funny wee larva. Late last summer I have the privilige of seeing a dragonfly - my first ever - though I think it cam e from a neighbouring pond site. Still, I'm hopeful to see more this year, and maybe even have some in the pond right now, waiting to unfurl gossamer wings and fly away, over the scented heights of my garden!

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*****Making Tiny Homes*****

If you can, put up bird and bat boxes, and you will find that they are used for roosting perches in the winter, and nesting in the spring.

A pile of logs and sticks is the perfect place for beetles, snails and slugs to live, and you may find hedgehogs taking up permanent residence during their winter hibernation!

Hedgehog houses are often quite expensive, but I just made one out of some bamboo canes and an old plastic compost carrier - if you are making your own, make sure the entrance is quite small: if it is large, you may have the local cats trying to shelter in there too!

Place a flat stone out for Thrushes to hammer the living daylights out of snails: you'll know if the birds have had their lunch by the clutter of empty snail shells lying around!

A bug box is a good idea, to attract beneficial insects like Lacewings and Ladybirds to your garden - again this is something you can make yourself by cutting short lengths of bamboo or hollow sticks and tying them together in a bundle. Place them in a bush or tree, but don't hide it too well, or the insects might have a job finding it!

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*****Conclusion*****

Even in the middle of a big city there is still fantastic scope for members of the wildlife population to come and set up home in your garden. And once they're there, they provide immense joy and satisfaction: they also help you to manage pest problems. For me there is nothing quite like sitting outside on a warm summer's evening watching frogs jumping out of the flower borders, bluetits feasting on the honeysuckle, butterflies and early evening moths fluttering around the buddleia, the screech of the swifts through the dusky sky and the snuffle and shuffle of Mr and Mrs Hedgehog, on their evening patrol for worms, slugs and other delectable treats for their young family.
Absolute bliss.
I am so proud of the little eco-system that is my back garden, and the whole families of creatures that it supports. It is a joy and a blessing to be able to create something that is beneficial to these wee creatures, and I hope in this review that maybe I have inspired you to do the same.

Helpful websites on this subject include:
www.bbc.co.uk
Go into the gardening section and there is a whole library full of information to browse through!

www.gardenorganic.org.uk

www.organiccatalog.com

GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY GARDENING!!

Thank you for reading. Kate x