Wildlife Gardening
The night garden
Sit outside on a spring or summer night and these are some of
the sounds you may hear: the low call of an owl, the snuffle and scrape
of a hedgehog, the eery scream of a fox and the loud love songs of mating
frogs. Watch carefully and you may see the dark silent shapes of bats
swooping low over insect-rich spots - above water, close to lights, under
branches - and moths flittering in the moon light. You’ll soon realise
that night is the time when the wildlife garden is at its busiest.
Moths
Like butterflies, moths need plants at which to feed and plants in which
to breed. They fly at dusk, so include night-scented species in your planting
scheme. To attract an abundance of moths, try 'sugaring’. Paint
a mixture of beer, molasses and pulped fruit on a tree trunk or fence-post
close to a light and you’ll be amazed by the variety of night-flying
insects that will be attracted.
Plants for moths:
Night scented stock:
Honeysuckle
Mint
Evening Primrose
Tobacco Plant
Soapwort
Breeding plants:
Heathers
Tansy
Primrose
Bats
Bats wake from hibernation in spring, emerging at dusk to hunt for night-flying
insects which they find in regular feeding areas. The rapid decline in
night-flying insects as a result of pesticide use in the last 50 years
has led to a decline in bat numbers, so a garden rich with night insect
life may be an attractive hunting ground for a local colony. Female bats
group together in nursery colonies to give birth around June and these
colonies are often found in the roofs of modern houses, under tiles and
in small cavities. Bats are protected by law - if they are living
in your loft it is illegal to disturb them.
You can build bat boxes and place them high up in trees or under the eaves
of houses, using rough sawn, untreated timber.
Foxes
Foxes have successfully established themselves in most habitat types thanks
to their opportunistic, unfussy nature and varied diet. They live in family
groups, each made up of a dog, a dominant vixen and up to six other females.
They prey on rabbits, hares, rats, voles and ground-nesting birds, including
domestic hens and ducks but they will also eat human refuse, berries and
fruit. And fox cubs love to feast on earth worms. Look out for urban fox
homes under your garden shed or in a hollow tree.
Hedgehogs
Endearing hedgehogs have long been known as the gardener’s friend
because they eat a lot of the bugs we love to hate. But hedgehogs can
have a hard time in your garden, falling into plastic sided ponds, eating
slugs poisoned with slug pellets or burrowing into piles of fallen leaves
that then become bonfires.
Help out your hedgehogs by supplementing their supper of beetles, slugs,
caterpillars and earthworms with a dish of mushy cat or dog food. (They
will appreciate this as they often walk up to two miles a night searching
for food.) Then build them a warm winter home out of a pile of logs covered
with leaves and brushwood.
 |
St John's wort |
| West
Garden Survey Help us find out about the region's wildlife by watching your garden over the summer months. We've teamed up with the Western Daily Press to organise this survey see their website for details |
| Articles in this series |
| Making
room for wildlife A year in the wildlife garden |
| The
wildflower garden Go chemical free! |
| The
water garden Help us eradicate pond pests |
| The
night garden Midsummer magic |
| Weeds
of mass domination American connections |
| Love
your creepy-crawlies Home sweet home |
| Childs
play Treasure trove |
| Eternal
sunshine of the wildlife garden Devils darning needles |
| The
bare necessity For peats sake |
Midsummer magic
At Midsummer powerful forces are abroad - so tread carefully in
your night time garden lest you disturb the fairies at play.... That’s
if you believe the ancient folklore that Midsummer Eve is a time when
the veil between this world and the next is particularly thin.
In ancient times, when white-robed Druids gathered at Stonehenge to watch
the sun climbing to the highest point in the sky, 21 June was the day
on which people celebrated Midsummer. With the coming of Christianity,
many Midsummer celebrations were moved to 24 June, the birthday of St
John the Baptist. Traditionally, St John’s Eve was seen as a time
of magic and mystery.
With so much enchantment in the air, it is hardly surprising that people
made sure they protected themselves and their families. And the ultimate
protection was afforded by a wonderful plant that we still use today -
St John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum). Also known as Chase-Devil
and thought to be imbued with the power of the sun, it was woven into
garlands and hung around houses and farm buildings. Today, St John’s
Wort is gaining popularity as a natural remedy against another, rather
more modern evil spirit - depression.
Many wildflowers, in fact, have found their way into our lives over the
centuries for their healing properties - and although we discarded
traditional herbal remedies in the twentieth century a new understanding
of their importance could lead to some interesting revivals.
For example, comfrey was called 'knitbone’ and a poultice of crushed
comfrey root was a common treatment for fractures. Hedge woundwort was
called 'clown’s all-heal’ by John Gerard, the 16th century
herbalist who related that a farm labourer healed his leg, injured when
scything, by applying a poultice of of hedge woundwort leaves. We now
know that this plant contains a volatile oil with antiseptic qualities.
Feverfew - as its name suggests - was used to treat migraine,
fevers and arthritis and the common dandelion is a mild laxative and diuretic.
Greater stitchwort was valued as a cure for “stitches and pains
in the side” .
Sometimes however, country lore got it wrong - lousewort is an unususal,
low-growing flower of damp meadows and it was reviled by farmers because
they believed it infected cattle with lice and liverworms. In actual fact,
it repels insects.
