Wildlife Gardening
Child’s play
Lift a stone and discover a bustling city of ants and earwigs;
sit quietly and see how close a blackbird comes; dip a jam jar in the
garden pond and examine the multitude of life that fills it; count butterflies,
follow bees and dig for worms. There’s just so much to excite and
interest children in a wildlife garden.
With the long summer holidays just around the corner, now’s a great
time to think about involving children in your wildlife gardening. It’s
not just a matter of keeping them interested and busy - learning
about and enjoying wildlife in safe, familiar surroundings will help children
grow to appreciate and care for it as they get older.
As well as spotting and watching wildlife, children just love projects
which actually encourage more wildlife into the garden, with visible results.
Here are some project ideas for a fun summer of wildlife gardening with
the kids.
Wormwatch
It’s difficult to watch earthworms close up in the garden, but it’s
quite easy create a simple wormery to get a worm’s eye view of their
activities!
You will need:
The largest empty clear plastic drinks bottle you can find
- A piece of cloth
- A rubber band
- Scissors
- Fallen leaves
- Sand
- Soil from the garden
- Worms from the garden - check out spaces under flagstones
Punch some small drainage holes in the base of the bottle (not big enough
for a worm - ask an adult to help with this). Cut the top off the bottle
so you can put things in. Build up layers of sand, soil and leaves in
the bottle. You should see the layers clearly. Gently put a few (5 -
10) earthworms into your wormery. Cover the top with a piece of cloth
fixed with a rubber band and put the wormery in a dark place. Make sure
the soil stays moist and after a few days you will see how the worms’
burrowing activity mixes the layers.
After a week or 10 days you should release your worms back where you found
them - with their newly mixed soil!
Lacewing Hotel
Lacewings are loved by wildlife gardeners because their larvae eat plant-sucking
aphids. From early August they’re looking for shelters for the coming
cooler months - here’s how to make one for them:
- Cut the base off a large plastic bottle using scissors
(ask an adult to help with this). Keep the lid on.
- Roll up about 100cm of corrugated cardboard so it
fits loosely inside the bottle and doesn’t poke out.
- Push a piece of wire through the bottle sides and
across the bottom to stop the cardboard falling out, and bend the ends
round.
- Using a piece of strong string tied around the neck
of the bottle, hang the hotel up in a tree, shrub, hedge or against
a fence in a climbing plant - near outside lights or lit windows is
particularly good.
- Some people take the shelters into sheds from November to February to protect them from frost.
Snug as a bug
If you don’t already have a dry stone wall or log pile in your garden,
why not make one of these shelters especially for housing mini-beasts?
- Space logs or sticks 10 - 15 cm apart in rows.
Build up several layers of logs placed in alternating directions. You
could even use drawing pins to fix a sheet of plastic over the top.
- Build a stick wigwam - lean four sticks together
like a pyramid, ends stuck in the ground and tops tied together with
string. Now build up the sides with other sticks. The natural gaps they
leave provide enough access for insect guests, while inside will be
warm and sheltered.
- If you can get some stones 15 -20cm across
or more, or some pieces of broken clay flower pot, try to mimic the
spaces in a dry stone wall by building a small cairn
Not so long ago wild flowers, butterflies and even birds’ eggs were
collected in their thousands by early naturalists - just take a
look in your local museum! Sadly even though we should know better now-a-days,
some people still take rare species from the wild. But it’s much
better for wildlife - and more fun - to watch, observe and
keep a nature diary instead.
Find an old file or notebook, decorate the cover and write your name in
it. This is your Nature Diary, and you can write in it as often as you
like about the plants, insects and animals you see in your garden or when
you’re out and about. With each entry try to include the date (put
in the year so you can remember it when you are 100 years old!), the weather
conditions and the place.
To begin with, maybe you could draw a map of your local area, mark your
favourite places on it and write about why they matter to you. Try to
find out about special wildlife places nearby by asking your local Wildlife
Trust or people you know.
Wildlife observations can be done any time any where. You might just see
something - an unusual bird in the garden or a bright butterfly
on your way to the park - and decide to record it in your diary.
Or you could set out to do a special wildlife watch session, in which
case you could take reference books, binoculars, a camera and a notebook
along with you (plus a snack as you’re bound to get a bit hungry).
As well as your notes and drawings, your nature diary could also be illustrated
with photos, maps, postcards, cuttings and leaflets. If you find anything
of interest like feathers, fur, fallen leaves or empty seed cases these
can be stuck in too, with information about where and when you found them.
For starters, why not follow the bees and butterflies that visit your
garden or local wild meadow and note down which colour of flowers they
prefer. Or you could take a closer look at creepy crawlies by building
a pit-fall trap - sink an empty yoghurt container into the ground
and see what falls into it. This works particularly well in meadowland
or grassland, or you could try doing it at the edge of your lawn. You
can put different tasty morsels in the pot such as cheese or fruit, and
see what food attracts what insects. Don’t forget to let your mini-monsters
go when you have finished recording them in your nature diary.
