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Walls And Fences
Garden walls and fences covered
with climbers add a new dimension to any garden and can help make even a
very small garden more attractive to wildlife. The walls of a house are
also a potential habitat for many species, especially if they are covered
with ivy. Even without vegetation, walls can offer nesting opportunities
for birds such as house martins, spotted flycatchers and house sparrows.
Valuable for:
Nesting birds, foraging and
hibernating insects, small mammals
Useful tips:
- If you already have a garden
wall, put up trellises about 10-15cm away from the wall, attaching them
with spacing blocks. Plant climbers 10cm or so away from the trellises:
out of the dry zone.
- The space between trellis and
wall will be ideal for nesting birds and, on the ground, will provide a
relatively safe green corridor for small mammals like bank vole, wood
mouse and shrews. Birds using the space for nests may include blackbird
and many other species.
- As well as providing cover for
nesting birds, wild honeysuckle and ivy will offer hibernation sites for
butterflies like brimstone and are good food plants for hawkmoths in the
case of honeysuckle and, in the case of ivy, which flowers very late in
the season, hoverflies and small tortoiseshells, commas, peacocks and
other butterflies.
- Bramble is another valuable
nectar source, much favoured by meadow brown and gatekeeper butterflies,
among others. Both insects, birds and small mammals feed on the berries.
- Use an open fronted nest-box
behind a climbing plant to attract nesting robins.
- If you use nest boxes for birds
place them carefully and never on a south facing wall or fence in full
sun.
- Consider using two or more blue
tit nest boxes: leave the old nest in one of the boxes to attract
nesting bumblebees.
- Place a log pile at the foot of
a fence or wall, behind a bush, as a cool shady spot for amphibians and
for hibernating insects such as ladybirds.
- Logs should be partly buried in
the ground and placed upright if possible in order to accelerate decay:
and therefore their usefulness to invertebrates.
- Ivy may act to protect the walls
of your house rather than damage them. It will only penetrate mortar
that is already crumbling.
- Of the many species of exotic
climbers, the berries of pyracantha are attractive to birds like the
blackcap.
- Consider also annual climbers
like runner beans, which are very attractive to bumble bees and
nasturtiums which may divert small white and large white butterflies
from your brassicas!
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