Wild visitors will settle in your garden, as long as you provide a few essentials
The end of our garden is a disaster. Overgrown grass, piles of logs and brushwood, gaping compost bins, stands of nettles, snakes of ivy, constellations of dandelions and - here and there - the forlorn seedheads of last year's perennials. It's a disaster area to human eyes perhaps, but our species holds a minority (and rather prissy) opinion on the matter. To the millions of other smaller creatures that share this little sixth of an acre, the end of this garden is a lovely place to live or visit: well appointed with food and accommodation, and with water just a short trip away in the pond, beyond the bamboos and past the purple hazel bush.
The shaggy grass furnishes a place for caterpillars to feed, and to attach their chrysalides while they reorganise their wormy bits and pieces into legs, wings, head, thorax and abdomen before emerging as freshly-laundered butterflies and moths. Frogs also hang out in the long grass, especially at the moister margins of the garden - snacking, no doubt, on crunchy and juicy caterpillar pupae.
The bundles of wood, and the soft, dark soil underneath are home to a crawling, scrambling, slithering crowd of invertebrates: woodlice, ground beetles, spiders, worms, centipedes, and a hundred other things I don't know the names of. The blackbirds, thrushes and dunnocks can't name them either, but they know where they can be found, and that they are good to eat. The compost bins are likewise teeming with a billions-strong population of minuscule beings, while the nettles are the exclusive egg-laying place of small tortoiseshell, peacock and red admiral butterflies (and the store cupboard for their caterpillars). The berries of ivy provide winter food for many birds, and its leaves are the preferred location for the second batch of the holly blue butterfly's eggs. The dandelions are one of the earliest sources of nectar for insects in spring, and the forgotten seedheads of the previous season's perennials have sustained many sparrows and other finch family members during the cold months.
I don't often sit in this dishevelled area, but when I do (it's the last part of the garden to retain a few rays of evening sun), its disorder becomes unimportant after a minute or two of stillness. My quietness soon coaxes creatures back again, where they buzz, flit and twitter, going about their business without any idea that their disregard of me is a priceless gift to this incongruous human in their midst.
But I must be truthful here: a unkempt garden is not essential if you want to commune with nature (although a laissez-faire attitude to the edges - with long grass and the odd pile of debris - does help). Wild visitors will settle into orderly gardens too, as long as a few home comforts are supplied.
All animals, no matter what their size, need to take in moisture. If you have space, a garden pond - with stepped or sloped sides for easy access - will attract frogs, birds, bees, and all manner of insects (perhaps even damsel flies or dragonflies). Put in some aquatic plants for shade and refuge, and don't panic if your pond becomes a bowl of green, algal soup within weeks of its installation. The water will clear naturally in a couple of months. If you don't have room for a pond, or if you have toddlers for whom it would be a hazard, a bird bath will attract plenty of our avian friends. It doesn't have to be an ornate or expensive affair: any heavy, shallow container (a large, terracotta saucer for a plant pot, for instance) will do the trick.
Every living thing, from the smallest insect to the largest mammal needs somewhere to retreat, whether it is from the attentions of predators or the rigours of weather, or somewhere to safely rest, lay eggs, or raise offspring. Birds are drawn to the dense cover provided by shrubs or hedges, and they also like a tree or two where they can bellow out their territorial proclamations, while keeping an eye on the day's events. Shrubs, with a nearby tree or two, mimic the edge of a woodland, one of nature's most biodiverse habitats. If you don't tidy away fallen leaves on the ground under woody plants, you'll be further imitating this most congenial of environments - and offering a hiding place to invertebrates, which in turn become food for larger creatures. A pile of logs or brush wood also makes a sanctuary for tiny things, and to hedgehogs and frogs.
The more diverse a garden is the more creatures it supports, with each one feeding the next one along the food chain. Flowers are essential, providing nectar and pollen to bees, flies, wasps and butterflies. Early blooms, such as hellebores and winter aconite, are life-savers for the first insects of spring, while late flowers - among them, eupatorium, Verbena bonariensis and asters - help at the other end of the season. Berrying trees and shrubs keep birds fed in autumn and winter; and ripe seed heads serve up their bounty in the chilly months.
Birch and alder support thriving populations of insects, which then become dinner for birds. Larger gardens can accommodate ash, beech, lime, oak, sycamore and willow - all excellent insect trees. Conifers (but, please, not the barely controllable Leyland's cypress) and evergreens offer cover and nesting places, while thorny and spiny shrubs, such as holly and pyracantha, are protection against marauding predators. A major killer of garden birds, incidentally, is the domestic cat, according to the British Mammal Society. Frogs, too, suffer horribly at the paws and jaws of moggies.
Frogs, birds, bees, butterflies, hedgehogs and countless other creatures (some engaging, others less so) are all part of the web of life that nature has woven around us. But it's a fragile web, one that is being frayed and torn by development, industrial agriculture and climate change. We can (and must) start to repair it, a little bit at a time. And no better place to start than in our own back gardens.
Further reading: Collins Wildlife Gardener by Stefan Buczacki (Collins, £20)