Creating a wildlife habitat in part of our garden

Wildlife is so important to the gardener. A diverse selection of animals and plants is much more desirable than a sparse one. For every pest there is a predator, hopefully more than one. Balance is the key. Allowing pests to live in modest populations means the predators have food and can also live at sustainable levels. Population cycles oscillate. You may recall aphids reproducing rapidly, forming clumps at the end of apple shoots and looking as though they will cause serious damage. Within a week or two ladybirds are also increasing in response to this food supply. There higher numbers then reduce the aphids to lower levels. So the cycle continues.

Graph showing how predator and prey species interact. As prey populations grow, predators respond. When prey numbers fall, predators also fall. The cycle continues.

From the gardeners perspective, the problems can occur when the pest numbers reach their highest before predators start to take control. If they destroy the crop before harvest can take place then all will be lost. The ideal scenario is to limited the peak populations of pests, but to still permit the growth of predators. Sort of ironing out the curves and reducing the peaks and troughs.

Pests have natural predators. For example parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the Cabbage White caterpillars which develop and hatch out after eating it from the inside. Parasitic wasps are very effective but they happen late in the life cycle, after the caterpillar has grown and turned into a chrysalis. Long after plants have been consumed.

So as gardeners we have to intervene. But how? Commercially spraying chemicals destroys as many pests as possible. Unfortunately that takes out many others beneficial predators as well. Not acceptable to us and on a small scale totally avoidable.

Organic gardeners tend to take other approaches such as physical barriers, maximising the quality of the soil to ensure healthy plants, using good plant breeds that are resistant and companion planting of flowers that promote the populations of natural predators.

This natural balance is a war zone. One gaining ground, another loosing it. A constant flux of numbers, birth and death. Somewhere in there is the gardener trying to beat off this invasion to produce food for themselves. By encouraging wildlife into the garden, combined with other complimentary methods, the odds can be in your favour.

Planting Hedges

The quarter of an acre we have is well arranged to create a good hedge boundary. 3 of the 4 sides are available giving some 150 feet of hedge space.

In planning what to plant, we have decided to go for native species. The basic ingredient being Hawthorn. Then putting some blackthorn and wild rose at certain points. Planting about 5 plants to the metre we will need about 200 plants.