Love your logs and leaves
Want to breathe a bit of life into your outdoor space? One of the simplest things to do is make use of the bits and pieces that we often clear away. Dead leaves, fallen branches, old logs, dry stems – they’re all useful. Gathered together, this mix can create a lovely pile of goodness to help your garden grow and encourage more birds, bees and other wildlife to visit.
Help for hedgehogs, birds and more
You might not be a fan of creepy crawlies in your composting materials, but they serve an important function by providing food for larger birds and other wildlife.
Those piles of gently rotting matter also provide a safe and often warm home to all sorts wildlife, too. Piles of leaves are where you will often find hedgehogs hibernating. Frogs and toads may shelter in the moist shade of a log pile. Blackbirds and wrens will nest in large stick piles. You may also see some fungi in your compost in the autumn.
A few handy hints
· Location, location, location – where you put the logs and leaves will affect the wildlife that uses it. Try different spots in your garden, with different sized and shaped piles.
· A log in a damp corner will be a boom for beetles
· Solitary bees prefer a sunny spot and will use any suitable sized hole to lay their eggs
· Size matters – five minutes with a drill will massively expand solitary bee’s range of hole choices
· Go peat-free – making your own compost is easy especially as it means you’re helping to save valuable natural habitats.
· Don’t have logs? Ask your local authority, or a local tree surgeon, if they have any spare
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