If you have your own home to look after this summer, one of your favourite parts of the home right now may well be your garden. Summer is the time of year when your garden is in full bloom and you will begin to see it really come to life. One of the things which can make your garden even more magical is the animals who arrive to feed on your fruits, seeds and leaves. If you want to encourage some more wildlife into your garden space this year, here are some ways you can do it.

1. Birdhouses and feeders

When you think of wildlife coming into your garden, the first type of animal you likely imagine is birds. There are so many different species of birds which grace our gardens such as blackbirds, magpies, blue tits, sparrows and finches. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours and are wonderful to watch when you are relaxing in the sun. To encourage more birds into your garden you can start by hanging a birdhouse on a tree at the back of the garden. You can then buy some bird feeders for the space, and finish it off with a bird bath to allow your winged friends to cool off on a hot day. 

2. Let the grass grow

Even though long grass can start to look pretty messy after a while, try your best to hold off from mowing the lawn all of the time to allow insects to thrive. Although not everyone is a fan of insects, they do an important job for our garden and they are essential to have in the food chain to keep the ecosystem going during the summer. Allow the grass to grow a little longer and let them grow with it.

3. Have climbing plants

Climbing plants such as roses and ivy can be incredibly useful for the wildlife in your garden because it will give them a place to hide as well as providing them with pollen and food sources for the birds and insects who visit your garden throughout the year. You may even find that small birds such as a wren will next in this climbing plant for security.

4. Insect hotel

We all know that having insects near the house or in our houses is annoying, and you will want to call your local bee removal experts if you do ever find a hive in your home. However, you can also deter pests from coming into your home by giving them a space outside. You can hang a bee house or ladybird house in the garden to allow them to thrive, and you can also pile up some leaves and rocks to allow other insects to nest and grow. You can also prevent them from coming inside by looking into these fly screens for doors that you can install.

5. Pond

If you don’t already have a pond in your garden, it should be one of the first things in your garden renovation list this year. A pond is a whole world of its one and it can house a wonderful variety of animals and insects. You will have things such as water boatman, damselflies, frogs, toads and even newts calling your pond home. It will bring life and variety to your garden and is a wonderful thing to have. Ponds in your garden can be quite a handful to manage if you've got algae growing around or on the surface of the water. It can sometimes help to employ the services of an aquatic management to treat your pond so that algae overgrowth doesn't occur, meaning the water is left looking clear and the wildlife using the pond are able to continue thriving.

6. Compost Bin

If you want to be eco-friendly in your garden this year and also save yourself some money on compost, you can bring a compost bin into the garden and let your food waste and garden waste breakdown by itself. This will be a great way to recycle your food and garden waste and will also allow insects to thrive and grow. Flies, small bugs and worms feed off decaying materials so they will be able to break down everything in the bin and leave you with a nutritional compost for the garden. Get yourself a leaf blower vacuum to put some dead leaves in a pile, then add them to your compost! An extra bonus of having a compost bin is the fact that you can recycle your important bank documents or sensitive information in there and it will be broken down with everything else!

7. Keep a gap in the fence

When you are doing things to your garden and it comes to putting up new fence panels, perhaps with the help of someone like these Edmonton fence experts, make sure that you choose a panel and lift it slightly off the ground to leave a gap which is a few inches high. The reason you should do this is so that frogs and toads can pass from garden to garden, and also so that hedgehogs can come into your garden to eat and to sleep. Allowing hedgehogs to travel through your garden will keep them happy and healthy and allow them to get enough food to stay alive during the hot summer.

8. Butterfly-friendly flowers

If there is one insect that everyone seems to love, it’s the humble butterfly. Butterflies come in thousands of colours, shapes and sizes and are beautiful when they fly around our garden in the summer. To attract these wonderful creatures you will want to bring in some butterfly-friendly plants such as wildflowers and buddleia. You will soon see lots of butterflies showing up in your garden and thriving.

9. Calm down with weeds

Weeds are the bane of every gardener’s lives, but they can actually be a huge part of the ecosystem in your garden. If you want an excuse to avoid the weeding this summer you will be glad to know that many insects feed on these weeds to stay alive so you can actually leave them for the most part and let nature take its course.

10. Sugar

Bees and butterflies are both struggling at the moment to stay healthy and happy because of the heat and the lack of plants for them to feed on. If you want to help your bees and butterflies to thrive this year, leave a couple of spoons or a small plastic life in the garden with a little bit of water and sugar. This will give them an essential energy boost and allow them to keep going and living on through the summer.