An English Garden will benefit from visiting insects, birds and mammals. They help by pollinating flowers, eating slugs, snails, aphids and other pests and enhance the enjoyment of your garden.

Here are my top ten tips for encouraging wildlife into your English Garden – adapt them to suit your own plot.

• Plant thickly – ideal strategy for an English Garden – this will make visiting creatures feel safe and undercover.
  
• Create a pond – appropriate to your garden size; it can be anything from an old sink or bath to a more substantial butyl lined area, (remember though no fish).
  
• Use old fashioned varieties of cottage garden plants, ones that provide good food for butterflies and bees.
  
• No English Garden should be without a selection of climbers, honeysuckles, roses, ivy etc as these provide shelter for small creatures and in the winter are a safe place to hibernate.
  
• Have just a small lawn area and place a few shrubs around one side (to give shelter) – if you have enough space, leave a part of your lawn unmown to create a meadow area.
  
• Plants native shrubs, especially those that have berries e.g. hollies.
  
• Don’t use slug pellets – they are very harmful to wildlife, especially hedgehogs, frogs and toads, even thrushes.
  
• Little piles of stones or logs create a habitat for small insects as do stone walls and paving.
  
• Put up bird feeders, bird baths and nest boxes.
  
• Lastly remember do not make your English Garden too tidy – work with nature not against it.

Then sit back and relax and watch the abundance of nature busily at work.

Enjoy your garden!