PPN event offers tips on gardening for biodiversity

Several requests for raised allotments in every community were made at a Public Participation Network event in Mullingar. An attractive booklet on Gardening for Biodiversity was distributed at the event.

This colourful publication provides details of how the trend of squeezing out nature can be reversed, and how private gardens can provide habitat and refuge for pressured wildlife. Insects, birds, fish, mammals and amphibians are being lost. The booklet aims to help individuals to open their gardens to nature, even in a small way, by hanging bird boxes, making a wildlife pond, creating safe habitats for wildlife, and making space for nature.

There are two million domestic gardens in Ireland. Making them biodiversity friendly would not only help wildlife, it would help human health and wellbeing. Being exposed to nature gives humans a buzz, the booklet suggests. "The wilder the area, with more different types of plants and animals, the better you will feel!".

The five gold-star plants for biodiversity are dandelions, willow, bramble, clover and ivy. Each summer, House Martins fly 10,000km, all the way from South Africa, to rear their young in Ireland. Forget about their droppings around your paths and enjoy the display they put on each evening as they soar and swoop. If they droppings are a serious problem for you, put up a "poop catcher," a wooden self under the nesting area, the booklet recommends. Swifts too are very site-faithful birds, but often they find it impossible to enter their nest hole because of renovations.

There are 99 bee species in Ireland, one third of which are at risk of extinction because of the reduction in food (flowers) and safe nesting sites. The good news is that every garden can be a haven for hungry pollinators.

The booklet suggests not cutting grass until after April 15, to allow dandelions to flower. Cut at the end of May and not again until mid or late July to increase growth of clover, self heal (or heal-all), cuckoo flower and bird’s-foot-trefoil and other wildflowers. A fourth cut at the end of August and a final cut after mid-October are recommended. It is important to remove clippings after each cut as wildflowers grow best in infertile soil.

Yellow rattle is recommended for wild meadows because it weakens grass growth and helps other wildflowers to flourish. Buddleia and hebe are great for attracting butterflies while daffodils, tulips and traditional bedding plants like geraniums, begonias, busy lizzy, petunias, polyanthus or salvia splendens are of little value to pollinators.

Nettles are baby food for butterflies and leaf litter is the ideal home for moth and butterfly larvae. Leaving an untidy/wild corner in your garden for nettles, bramble and ivy is a great way of enhancing biodiversity, the booklet suggests.

Making a log pile in your garden provides shelter for small mammals, hibernating amphibians and insects, and the resident grubs, insects and worms provide food for birds. A variety of interesting fungi will also move in, and within a year or two, a whole wildlife community will have assembled in your log pile. The booklet provides practical advise on how to make your log pile as wildlife friendly as possible.

It also encourages the preservation of dry stone walls and rockeries and the planting of native trees that insects have adapted to live with and use as a home. It provides advice on propagating plants from cuttings, protecting hedgerows, letting the "long acre" grow naturally, making a pond or bog or rain garden, and protecting bats, squirrels, hedgehogs, and other mammal visitors. There is a section on biodiversity-friendly management tips and lots of useful links to organisations that can help and advise.

The booklet is funded by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht through the National Parks and Wildlife Service’s National Biodiversity Act Plan Fund, with support from the Heritage Council and the Local Authority Heritage Officer Network.