When I came to Walkern 15 yrs ago, my 300ft garden contained a few shrubs , a Leylandii hedge , 3 alders, and a plum tree with a lot of mown grass!
It now contains approx 200 ft of flower planting and is almost always buzzing with bees, butterflies and other insects.
For wildlife there are :
Heaps of dead branches and twigs left for insects etc
An area left to long grass , which is cut in September. Lots of nettles with cowparsley, buttercups, hogweed and now wild geraniums have made a significant appearance.
A 200ft native hedge: including hawthorn, blackthorn and spindle. A 100 ft mixed shrub and native hedgerow
Two small ponds in which we normally get newts, including crested ones and dragonflies etc
Planted six crab apples, two ornamental cherries, two Sorbus, two hornbeams, two apples, one plum, three hawthorns, three hollies, two viburnums, and at least four elders plus several self sown elderberries and hollies.
2 x ~100 ft of beds given over to flowering plants, including lots of spring bulbs then forget me nots, sedums , penstemons, nepetas, salvias, eryngiums and echinops in summer that the butterflies and bees love. There are flowers for pollinators from January, starting with carpets of snowdrops, until early November, until the frosts. Almost everything is composted for mulching the beds, or if burnt, the ash is returned as potash to the shrubs and roses
Never use weedkiller on the lawn so there are lots of self seal, daisies, dandelions etc. Never use insecticides. I have eight water butts and the water off the conservatory roof fills the ponds.
I have seen wildlife including badgers, muntjac, foxes, squirrels, a mole, slow worms, newts, mining bees, dragonflies and damselflies, bank voles, and a pygmy shrew but never a hedgehog, perhaps because there are too many badgers around who like them as a snack. Small bats live in the alders.
Lots of birds but definitely fewer than in 2020, perhaps because lots of the trees and shrubs in the gardens along the Beane, behind the High Street, have been cut down, the trees with the permission of East Herts council ! 🙁 . House martins nest on the front of the house.
Unfortunately, I have had to stop putting food out for the birds as rats set up a very large, undetected, home in the roof space above our garage and have chewed through the electrics!
