Create Your Own Wildlife Friendly Gardening Sanctuary

Create your own wildlife sanctuary in your own backyard is an enjoyable way to relax and experience nature, easily attracting birds, bees, and squirrels if the appropriate habitat is provided.

Wildlife requires food, water and shelter – by providing this environment through smart landscaping practices you can turn your yard into an ideal habitat.

1. Create a Blank Canvas

New gardens present an opportunity to design an environmentally-friendly habitat from scratch. Trees and shrubs are cost-effective ways to increase biodiversity regardless of garden size or type.

Water sources – be they garden ponds, waterfalls or container ponds – make an enormous impactful statement about wildlife in any garden and are essential features. Don’t fear so-called weeds; they provide essential food and shelter to wildlife; dandelions and nettles can even be planted in pots to prevent spreading further while providing visual interest when covered in blooms.

An outdoor seating area – be it a cafe table, bench or hammock – provides an idyllic retreat. Consider leaving some fallen leaves and flower heads over winter as this will attract wildlife and add interest.

2. Attract Birds

All wildlife needs shelter, food and water to survive. Birds will flock to well-stocked gardens with seeds and berry foods while butterflies may be drawn by seasonal flowers that open.

Even small ponds will attract amphibians, while dragonflies and other insects are drawn to any source of water. A compost heap also provides warmth during winter hibernation periods for hedgehogs.

Walking interviews produced results showing that garden size positively correlated with attitudes about WFG and completeness of effort made to support wildlife, but perceived lack of space negatively correlated. This suggests that certain garden sizes might make it more challenging to commit fully to WFG; however, key themes emerged that suggest success can still be achieved with smaller gardens.

3. Create a Nesting Site

Enhancing your garden as a wildlife habitat can be an exciting prospect and is achievable at any scale – be it an urban balcony container garden, suburban lawn or roadside greenspace. Even urban balconier container gardens and suburban lawns can become beneficial resources for local fauna by replacing traditional grass with native species and using organic gardening practices that attract birds, butterflies and other creatures to the space.

Integrate plant species that offer multiple nectar sources throughout the growing season in order to attract a wide range of pollinating insects, as well as host plants for butterfly caterpillars (e.g. buckthorn) into your landscaping plan and consider using water features that attract these pollinators species.

Make sure your property offers additional shelter options like brush piles and bird houses for wildlife to use; when safe to do so, preserve any dead trees on the property as these give wildlife places to hide from predators and harsh weather as well as nest and raise young.

4. Build a Nesting Box

Wildlife habitat is being threatened daily by development; you can help make your yard an oasis for wildlife by providing food, water and shelter – whether that’s from just providing balcony space to townhouses with small backyards to those owning large suburban gardens and corporate properties – you can create an area where animals can raise their young.

Add bird nesting boxes to your garden to attract wrens, chickadees and other birds that feed on unwanted insects, disperse pollen and seeds and raise young in your yard. Many bird species nest in holes (cavities) within dead trees called “snags”, yet these natural sites are being removed for aesthetic or safety concerns.

Provide wildlife with clean, fresh water with a bird bath or small pond. Avoid using pesticides or overfertilizing which could harm their wellbeing as well as pose water quality risks for both people and native plants.

5. Create a Nesting Spot

An abundant garden filled with dense grasses, shrubs, berries and trees offers wildlife shelter from wind and weather as well as places for them to court, nest and raise young. To achieve this aim, select plants which provide nectar or seeds such as native wildflowers or shrubs. Also be mindful that butterflies have specific host plants they rely upon – these could serve as caterpillar hosts and nectar providers!

Consider turning some of your lawn into a wildflower meadow instead. If space allows, dig a pond to attract aquatic wildlife and provide amphibian habitat. Leave layers of leaves, woody debris and brush piles where possible as these natural habitats provide animals a home where they may hide eggs or lay them before discontinuing use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

6. Create a Nesting Area

Since habitat destruction, gardens provide wildlife a haven. Bees, butterflies and birds alike often depend on gardens for shelter as a last refuge – whether this means planting species that attract them directly or offering simple refuges such as piles of leaves, branches or logs or stacks of wildflowers and grasses.

Birdhouses and owl nest boxes make great additions to the garden, as are frog ponds for attracting amphibians like common frogs and smooth newts that help control insects. Make sure to clean both birdhouses and owl boxes each November once all nesting activity has concluded!

Although newly installed gardens may appear uninviting and barren at first, they can quickly transform into the ideal habitat for wildlife. By improving stony or thin soil and adding native plants, new gardens can quickly meet many of the criteria required to qualify as Certified Wildlife Habitats.

7. Create a Nesting Place

An eco-garden provides food and shelter to wildlife while also helping protect natural areas and their biodiversity from human-centric development.

Make sure there is at least one source of clean water available – this could be in the form of a natural feature like a pond, stream, or spring; or it could come from human intervention like a birdbath or raingarden.

Provide dense plants that offer hiding spaces and nesting opportunities, mixing evergreen and deciduous species together for year-round cover, leaving patches of wildflowers and berries as winter food sources, offering seeds, suet, or other treats as food supplements, leaving leaf litter for overwintering efforts, leaving leaf litter as mulch as well as supporting local conservation organizations or businesses that work to conserve wildlife habitat.

8. Create a Nesting Area

Making wildlife-friendly garden initiatives such as leaving patches of long grass or installing a hedgehog house are simple ways to boost wild animal populations and provide food, shelter and breeding areas for breeding or hibernating purposes.

Planting a diverse collection of shrubs and flowering plants that bloom at different times throughout the year will provide wildlife with year-round food sources. Honeysuckle tubes are particularly beloved among butterflies while flat flowers such as daisies or wild carrots attract bees.

Results of the multiple linear regression model indicated that positive attitudes and garden size positively correspond with adherence to different wildlife friendly gardening components, while self-reported lack of time and knowledge about conventional gardening’s impacts on wildlife negatively correlate with WFG components that require medium to high effort levels.

9. Create a Nesting Area for Hedgehogs

An attractive hedgehog house can help attract this endangered species back into your garden. Build or purchase one from a garden centre or online, covering it with turf, earth or wood pile and sowing wildflower seeds as an additional shelter source.

Assemble logs into small piles or provide heaps of leaf litter as nesting sites for hedgehogs to nest on your garden soil or piles of leaves in winter for them to hibernate on.

Our research demonstrated that self-reported lack of economic resources correlated negatively with the number of wildlife-friendly garden elements implemented, while neighbors’ norms and knowledge regarding impacts of gardening behaviors on wildlife also decreased with WFG components requiring medium or high effort levels. Yet despite these difficulties, positive attitudes toward WFG can make a difference.

10. Create a Nesting Area for Squirrels

Winter brings with it many wild animals who rely on seed as food, so rather than cutting all your flowers back in autumn, leave some to form seed heads – this will attract goldfinches and sparrows to your garden and help them survive through colder conditions.

A squirrel den, or drey, can be created out of branches and leaves tucked into trees. For optimal results it should be situated among woodland with mast-producing oaks or hickories as well as deciduous beech trees.

Woodpiles consisting of logs and leafy debris provide shelter to amphibians such as frogs, newts, toads, slow worms and hedgehogs as well as insects such as slow worms. Hedgehogs may hibernate here as well. A squirrel house – simply a box with an entrance hole three inches wide – may also provide sanctuary.