attracting Wildlife

Kaldorn

i want to attract wildlife to my gard.its perfectly accessible,it has a low fence seperating the gardens and animals could get under my side gate,any tips besides leaving out dog food in a bowl?

magicbastarder

plant lots of flowers in the garden, hich will attract bees and insects.
if you can, throw some old (untreated) lumber in a corner; will attract all sorts of creepy crawlies, and possibly a hedgehog looking for shelter.

artieanna

Be careful about leaving out dog food as you could invite in unwelcome visitors like vermin. To get birds and insects you can plant flowers like stocks, rockets, or shrubs that bear berries.

If you are in a built up area it will probably be more difficult to get foxes, rabbits, hares, badgers to come into your garden, and if they do you probably won't see them as it will be late at night.

Even if you are in the countryside they will not necessarily come into your garden but they will be in nearby fields and you will see them from time to time.

Rabbits live usually where there is sandy soil to burrow. foxes are abundant where there is tree plantations. Badgers territory is within distance of its sett and lots of tunnel openings can be seen in the ground. Hares can be see in bogland, woodland, green fields almost anywhere.

doctor evil

Don`t leave out dog food as you may end up with rats or feeding the local feral colony.

I`d go with a bird table to stock in winter and a bird bath. If its possible smack up a bird or bat box.

boneless

I increased the visits of birds and insects by putting in a pond. I also had a fox taking a drink from it on a couple of occasions... but the dogs ran him off...:p Their pond!!

I put up nest boxes this year but had no luck. I may have been too late with them.

dranoel

Plant a Buddleja, it's called the 'butterfly bush' for good reason.

spar-hawk

Have a look at this pdf on attracting birds to your garden

http://www.photofile.ie/Gardening_for_birds.pdf

tampopo

good link there spar-hawk.

spar-hawk

tampopo wrote:

good link there spar-hawk.

Thanks tampopo

I came across a load of brochures on wildlife in the enfo offices near trinity street - unfortunately, they are paper ones so you'll have to go get them yourself. Good content though

magicbastarder

i was recently reading that the best three things for attracting wildlife are trees, ponds, and compost bins.
the effectiveness of the pond is noticeably reduced if you have fish in it, though. and the book didn't specify whether the compost bins should have open sides or not.

also mentioned was drilling holes of varying sizes through untreated lumber, and nailing them up around the garden, which will attract solitary bees and wasps.

Muineach

Bird's love this plant,
Contoneaster
, i wasn't sure of the spelling of it, the "irish" way is cottony aster, I thnk lidl/aldi do them for 2e each.

We have a large wall outside our sitting room window, birds are coming all day when the weather is bad, especially in the winter. The plant is large at this stage so there's always food on it, year round.

Mothman

spar-hawk wrote:

Thanks tampopo

I came across a load of brochures on wildlife in the enfo offices near trinity street - unfortunately, they are paper ones so you'll have to go get them yourself. Good content though

On line here
http://www.enfo.ie/fr_pub_2.htm

Most of them are htm files, some are pdf

Gaspode

If you want to attract all sorts of insects, godd choice of plants help.
I have a lot of Sedum which attracts a huge number of butterflies, bees and other insects at this time of year.
See Here and here.

If you're near Dublin 15 I've a few spare ones you're welcome to.

Kaldorn

email me or pm me and ill arrange to pick them up cheers

Gaspode

Kaldorn wrote:

email me or pm me and ill arrange to pick them up cheers

PM sent.

newsjunky

Tips for attracting wildlife:
1. Plant native plants (you'd be surprised how few of those there are nowadays), especially those that berry
2. Make sure you include good shelter plants (such as bushes and pines)
3. Make a brush pile in one corner of your yard and dump your raked leaves on top (this will invite all sorts of burrowing creatures and maybe even some birds looking for warmth)
4. provide water, food, and shelter (water can even be a bowl sitting on a pile of rocks, but make sure to clean it and change the water regularly or it will breed diseases)

I've used these tips on my backyard and we have all manner of creatures:D

magicbastarder

newsjunky wrote: »

1. Plant native plants (you'd be surprised how few of those there are nowadays), especially those that berry

this actually doesn't make as much of a difference as people believe, according to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/No-Nettles-Required-Reassuring-Gardening/dp/1905811144/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-5541005-1776661?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192537728&sr=8-1

which is written by one of the people behind a sizable biodiversity study in the UK (http://www.bugs.group.shef.ac.uk/).
he claims that there's very little difference between native and non-native plants in attracting wildlife, unless you've a garden big enough to take oak trees and the like.

the book is a good read.

Nala

We have a hedgehog that comes in every night or so, it's great because our garden has too many snails! It's been coming in that regularly recently and was around in the spring aswell.

We had one last year as well, a female, but she disappeared for the winter. I am hoping it is the same hedgehog that we have at the moment.

I would love to feed the wild birds but I have 5 cats so I can't.

Day Lewin

Water in any form will be used by birds to drink and bathe, also foxes will drink there. Dublin gardens will have foxes and hedgehogs, not normally badgers. You can encourage a frog colony if you had local tadpoles. But foxes may eat the frogs!
Hedgehogs can travel several miles in a night and they all look the same so it may not be the same one! Still, it's an honour to be visited and they love to eat slugs and snails. Just make sure there's a bit of plank in your pond so hedgehogs - who like a drink as well as anyone - can climb out if they fall in.