Boost your biodiversity – Wildlife gardening

‍Why do gardens matter?

Gardens take up a lot of space collectively - there are estimated to be 25 million gardens in the UK¹! Gardens account for approximately 30% of urban areas ², almost 5% of UK land mass ¹, and this is a big area to make a positive difference for nature. The majority of people in the UK (84%) with access to outdoor space are already taking action to help wildlife ¹.  

Gardens are good for us

Access to greenspace and engaging in gardening has been shown to improve our mental and physical health and wellbeing.  

• 77% mental health improvements - reduced stress, anxiety and depression

• 76% physical improvements - linked to lower death rates from heart and respiratory disease

• 44% social wellbeing improvements

• 81% improved morale

• 85% of community gardeners say gardens bring people together¹

Gardens are good for nature

Gardens support nearly half of all UK birds, mammals, butterflies, reptiles and amphibians ¹. Outdoor spaces, including gardens, parks, and balconies, can all help boost biodiversity – key to stable ecosystems. Biodiversity usually means species diversity, so the number of individuals and varieties of species. The higher the biodiversity, the more resilient our planet is to climate change, disease, and pollution. Wildlife and nature are key to our survival, including providing clean air, rainwater, food, medicines, and a stable climate. 

What actually uses our gardens?

This is all great in theory, but what can we actually see in our garden? It turns out, plenty! A major study of a back garden in Leicester found that over 30 years the space supported 2673 species ³. Some examples to look out for in your own garden include:  

Pollinators  

Butterflies – Painted Lady, Common Blue, Meadow Brown, Large and small white, marbled white

Moths – elephant and hummingbird hawk moths, scarlet tiger moth, silver-Y moth, brimstone moth, garden carpet moth

Bees – bumblebee, honeybee, solitary bees – ivy bee, leaf cutter bees  

Mammals ‍

Hedgehogs, foxes, badgers, bats, harvest mice, dormice

Reptiles

Grass snakes, slow worms, common lizards

Birds

Robins, blackbirds, collared doves, chaffinches, sparrows, finches, bluetits, woodpeckers, owls

Insects

Beetles and bugs – ladybirds, violet ground beetles, marmalade hoverfly, green lacewing, centipedes, millipedes

Jobs to do now in the garden to help nature

Help the birds:

• Install bird feeders and bird baths – Help provide for birds in your patch and install bird feeders on trees, shrubs and fences around your garden and a bird bath. Think about location to ensure these aren’t in easy reach of predators like domestic cats, and the type of feed you want to use. Include variety by having different food in different feeders – from sunflower seeds, to nuts to fat balls.  Bird feeding | what & when to feed birds in your garden

• Give your existing feeders a spring clean – Regularly wash bird baths and refill with clean tap water. Clean bird feeders weekly, if possible, with disinfectant to remove old food and droppings and sweep the area around and underneath bird feeders. This will help reduce the spread of bird diseases. Bird feeding | what & when to feed birds in your garden

• Bird boxes - Install bird boxes and nests around your garden. Try to provide for declining species such as starlings, house sparrows and swifts, with a swift box, starling box or sparrow terrace under your eaves. Nest boxes for birds | BTO

Support emerging hedgehogs:

• Hedgehogs who have nested over the winter will start to emerge as the weather warms up and they will be hungry! Plan to help them out by providing a feeding station with shallow dishes of water and food - mix dog food and rolled oats. Never put out bread or milk as these will do more harm than good and remember that some hedgehogs might still be resting so be careful around leaf piles and under shrubs so that you don’t disturb anything.  

• Our gardens are individual, but animals don’t see it that way. Hedgehogs will want to travel far and wide in search of food and mates so consider putting a hedgehog hole in your garden fences to allow them to pass safely through and avoid roads and busy pathways. A great example of this can be seen in Kidlington where Wild Oxfordshire created hedgehog highways through gardens to make several hedgehog streets.  Hedgehog-friendly gardening / RHS Gardening

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Don’t forget the insects:

• Resist the urge to cut back plants until March. Dead heading removes seed heads that are a vital resource for insects and birds over the colder months. When it comes time to cut back, save yourself a job and be less tidy by incorporating the chop and drop method. Cut old herbaceous perennial growth into smaller pieces and drop them on the surface of the beds. This forms a cover layer over the soil and decomposes where it lies, rather than in a compost heap. The same mulching rewards with less of the work and it improves your soil health, provides habitats for insects and small mammals, and encourages beneficial fungi. Chop and drop: all you need to know / RHS Gardening

• Create a bumblebee home : Queen bumblebees are emerging from hibernation around March, and they need somewhere to build a nest for the year. Bumblebees like to nest in abandoned mice nests, and we can recreate similar spaces in our gardens. Use a small terracotta pot filled with moss and dried paper, dig a hole in your garden, pop it upside down in the hole, and leave the bees to find it. Ideally select a sheltered spot, maybe under a shrub or in a border that gets sun for around half the day. How-to-build-a-bumblebee-nest-Scottish-Wildlife-Trust.jpg (872×616)

• Don’t forget about bumblebee food! Help by leaving dandelions in your garden as an early nectar source.

Plan for the spring and summer

‍Now is a great time to plan for what you could do in your garden to help wildlife over the coming year. Below are a few suggestions to add features and planting for a range of insects and animals. Happy planning!

Planting:

• Insects – think about providing for pollinators and bugs with some colourful flowering additions to your beds, including night flowering plants for moths, which also helps support local bat populations. Consider adding larval food plants for caterpillars as well. Use the RHS plants for pollinators list for guidance RHS Plants for Pollinators / RHS and Wild Oxfordshire’s Bee Friendly planting guide 681b687a2c2b3f7c0cdaed38_Downloadable Bee-Friendly Plants Sheet.pdf. For more information on the work we done to help bees and pollinators see Wild Oxfordshire’s Bee Healthy Project 681b687a2c2b3f7c0cdaec8c_bee_healthy_project_guide_report.pdf

• Birds - Plant berry-rich shrubs to provide for birds in the autumn. Varieties of hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), elder (Sambucus nigra), Berberis or Viburnum opulus, are great options dotted around your garden as shrubs. Hawthorn, crab apples, and rowans can be planted as shrubs or small trees, perfect for gardens that don’t have a lot of space.  Five ways to help birds in every season / RHS Gardening

New features:

• Plan a pond or hoverfly lagoon:

• Installing a pond is cited as one of the best ways people can increase biodiversity in their garden. It doesn’t need to be large, and it can even be in a container. Make sure you include access routes for amphibians so they can get in and out easily, and plants for wildlife. Alternatively, you can make a hoverfly lagoon using a container to help these underappreciated pollinators.

Advice and Resources - Freshwater Habitats Trust

Wildlife Ponds: How to Make Them | RHS Advice

Water habitats | RHS Advice

Homemade Hoverfly Lagoons | Wildlife Trust for Beds Cambs & Northants

• Build a bug hotel or solitary bee habitat  

Bugs and beetles need a place to call their own in your garden, and creating a habitat for them using twigs, pinecones, and dried leaves is a great thing to install in the back of your garden. Many guides recommend using old pallets, but if you want a more polished look, consider building a bookshelf or an apothecary-style cabinet (or upcycling a second-hand one) and filling it. For solitary bees, consider adding a bee nest using different-sized hollow branches (such as hay or bamboo) to cater to the various bee species, or install a bee post in your flower beds using a piece of wood with a variety of hole sizes drilled into the sides  

How to Make a Bug Hotel: DIY Bug Hotel Ideas

A brief guide to solitary bee nest boxes - Bumblebee Conservation Trust

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• Install dead wood in the garden:  

• Log piles are a great way to provide habitats for lots of different wildlife, including insects, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals. The logs provide shelter and food but can also look good as sculptural slopes and undulations rising through grasses or flowering perennials.  

• A dead hedge can be made using woody pruning offcuts and create a linear habitat for insects, beetles and hedgehogs. You can repurpose old twigs and branches and make small boundaries for planting beds and pathways. Simply knock pairs of parallel upright poles into the ground every 1.5m using thicker branches, pack the spaces in between lengthways with branches and twigs, and ensure that there are sporadic gaps for hedgehogs to pass through. The wood will rot down over time and provide value to wildlife. Just top up branches and replace uprights when needed.  

Dead Wood and Compost Heap Habitats | RHS Advice

‍Change your routine:

Cut out the chemicals - Fewer than 1% of Britain’s insects are garden pests⁴, and many weeds are beneficial food sources for pollinators. Instead of adding polluting chemicals to our gardens, which harm wildlife, pose a risk to children, and pollute our groundwater supplies, try nonchemical controls, create a healthy garden ecosystem that will allow natural predators to keep your aphid numbers down, and embrace plant variety and flower richness as beautiful, even if it is unplanned! Non-chemical weed control | RHS Advice  

Change your mowing regime – As the warmer weather approaches, our grass will start to grow again, and everyone will be eyeing their lawnmowers. But reducing your mowing to once every two weeks rather than weekly can improve biodiversity in your garden. The time between mows allows flowering and increases the abundance of bees. Also consider adding in longer sections of grass into your garden design, either around the edges or in patterns, creating contrast and visual interest as well as space for wildlife.

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Links and further information:

Gardening for Wildlife  I  Wild Oxfordshire  

Wildlife gardening | The Wildlife Trusts

Wildlife Gardening Forum - based in Oxfordshire

Gardening month by month | The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales

What is biodiversity, and why is it so important? / RHS Gardening

RHS Gardening Report 2025 | UK trends and impact

Five myths of wildlife gardening, pitted against science / RHS Gardening

RHS State of Gardening / RHS Gardening

Footnotes:

¹ The RHS State of Gardening Report (2025). The Royal Horticultural Society. RHS, London, UK. (Eds. Griffiths, A., Gush, M.B., Salisbury, A., Sutcliffe, C., Redmond, H., Sachs, A., Konyves, K.)

² McLaughlin, C.L., Blanusa, T., Cameron, R., Lukac, M., Pfuderer, S. & Bishop, J. Actionable information and climate change awareness drive consumer selection of environmentally beneficial garden plants. Landscape and Urban Planning, 266 (2026), 105522.  

³ Owen, J. (2010). Wildlife of a Garden: A Thirty-year Study. Royal Horticultural Society ISBN 978-1-907057-12-0.

⁴Wildlife in gardens / RHS Gardening

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