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We’ve rounded up some great advice on how to create a more nature-friendly outside space no matter the size of your garden.
The Castle Hotel in Bishops Castle, Shropshire was recently named as one of the first pubs to be verified by Warner’s Distillery’s Nature Marque accreditation.
Launched in June to reward pubs that have taken steps to make their outdoor spaces welcoming the wildlife, the accreditation scored sites on how well they have transformed their external areas to accommodate nature.
Good for business
Owner and manager Henry Hunter outlined the benefits of having a wildlife-friendly garden at the pub.
He said: “In fact, we find the more wildlife friendly our garden is, the more people come and use it. So, they complement each other.
“A nature-friendly garden is good for business and it’s good for pubs. It doesn’t take a huge amount of work.
“It just means thinking about things a bit more holistically and doing a bit of research, as well as being creative.”
Advice given
The Woodland Trust has five top tips on making the garden a haven for wildlife:
- Keeping an area wild and letting a patch of your garden grow on its own can provide a nectar source for bees while leaving grass uncut and chemical-free can allow plants such as daisies to grow, which offer food, shelter and breeding grounds for insects that then provide food for birds and small mammals such as hedgehogs.
- Planting shrubs and trees can help reduce noise and flooding while also providing food for insects including bees and caterpillars as well as mammals such as song thrush, blackbird, badgers and mice.
- Creating a ready-made home for wildlife can help them stay for longer. These can be homemade bird boxes, bug hotels and frog pots or hedgehog houses.
- With the hot temperatures of the summer, ensuring a water source could be a lifeline to many species. Keep it clean, topped up and placing it near trees or plants so the wildlife can approach it from and escape to safe cover can help a range of creatures keep hydrated throughout the year.
- Giving wildlife access to an easy meal can attract a plethora of species and can help them out, particularly during the winter months.
Moreover, the Royal Horticultural Society advised that composting garden waste can help wildlife and plants, speeding up the natural recycling of nutrients.
As well as garden waste, composting can also reduce with food waste as it’s way of disposing of many items of produce such as eggshell, used coffee grounds and vegetables.
- The Morning Advertiser has launched the Green Initiative, which is supported by Molson Coors Beverage Company and Brewfitt.