[elleme]

The Garden:
1. Should wildlife be considered when designing/creating/changing/maintaining all gardens?
Yes.

2. Is an informal garden preferable to a formal one for wildlife?
It would be more of a challenge to be wildlife friendly in a formal garden style. Probably less variety, regular clipping may take away at least some future berries, tidying-up and cutting the lawn aren't going to help.

3. Should there be a lot more plants than hardscaping?
Most definitely! I see so many modern garden designs with loads of decking/paving and very few plants used.

4. Should they contain ponds &/or water features?
Where possible.

5. Are plant corridors necessary?
I don't really live in one but I know some changes I've made have led to an increase in some garden wildlife. So I would say they are highly desirable, but that's not reason to give up on wildlife gardening if you don't live in one.

7. Should we use local 'native plants' or are non-natives just as good for local wildlife?
I think we should use a proportion of native plants but non-natives should be considered which are known to be good nectar plants etc. With the latter it's probably better if they have been around for long enough to be known not to be wildly invasive.

8. Should we recreate natural habitats (for eg.meadows) with the same 'native'/wildflowers?
If you want a specific type of habitat like that, I don't see why not.

9. How would this be a 'garden' as opposed to 'wilderness'?
A modern wilderness would probably be covered in introduced buddleia, judging from what I've seen of brownfield sites in cities.

10. Are wildlife gardens likely to require less maintenance?
Possibly, but that depends entirely on the style of the alternative to a wildlife garden. The alternative might be all mowed lawns, topiaried shrubs and bedding plants at the extreme high maintenance end or a small selection of low maintance plants with lots of hardscaping at the other extreme.


Providing Shelter, Food & Water for Wildlife:
11. Should we provide housing for refuge/breeding/hibernating?
Yes.
12. How? Wooden boxes? compost heap? woodpiles? uncultivated areas? planting?
Whatever is feasible in your space - I think all of those could be considered.

13. Should we provide food?
At least in the form of plants and not poisoning part of their food chain, yes.

14. How? Purchased wildlife foods? Plants (alive & dead)? Natural prey?
Again, all are feasible, starting with the natural options of typical food plants and not using insectides. Although I feed birds on purchased seed, I do think there's a possible risk attached to buying in food for some species - feeding wild foxes may not be wise if you don't want them to start domesticating.

15. Anyone wonder whether generous artificial (fast food) feeding leads to overweight
or 'lazy' wildlife, a dependency on being fed or a loss of natural instinct to forage or hunt?
Yes, I wonder about that, as with the above comment on foxes.

16. Providing water - treated tap water in refillable containers or in ponds, streams & water features?
I think this is a good idea, generally, I'm unaware of any harmful aspect.

Wildlife Products being Marketed/Sold:
17. Are products perhaps concentrated on a handful of 'attractive'/cute garden visitors eg. birds, butterflies, bees, hedgehogs, ladybirds? A small percentage of visitors? Anything for beetles - a vast, often forgotten group of garden visitors?
Yes, if it's cute and fluffy (excepting grey squirrels) some kind of feeder/nesting box will be marketed to us. But I don't know that people all consider bees cute and some people are quite phobic, so they are something of an exception to the rule.

18. Are we too reliant on attractively packaged, ready-made wildlife solutions rather than using what we already have, recycling things, home-made solutions?
I don't think we can generalise too much but I think it's better for time-poor people to do something, rather than do nothing at all (as long as they are not so busy they are letting the contents of the birdfeeder turn mildewy). But home made solutions are good.

19. What items do you have x how many
2 birdfeeders (bought), bog-standard plant saucers providing rainwater, home made solitary bee nest. To my guilt I bought a birds nesting box in spring and never got around to putting it up (couldn't find the drill at the time!)

20. Any products had little or no uptake so far?
Bee nest - I think one cell has been filled but it's early days and I think some of them nest in the garden wall masonry anyway. Nesting box (for obvious reasons!)

21. Did you look into how/where was best to site the items in 20?
Yes.

22. do you feel there is too much hype/marketing of these products?
Not sure. It is starting point in raising awareness even if it would be desirable for people to look at the bigger picture. Perhaps once they start getting birds in the bird-feeder they'll look into more aspects of wildlife gardening.

23. Do you feel attractively packaged (often celebrity endorsed) wildlife foods and products are over priced for what they are? Eg. peanuts, suet/fat balls, bird boxes, drilled pieces of silver birch for ladybirds?
Are celebrities endorsing them? I never knew. I don't know if they're overpriced as I'll buy what's cheapest as long as it appears to do the job - I know I saw cheap nesting boxes in Woolies which were useless as you couldn't open them to clean them out.

24. Are the wildlife foods/products you buy sourced/made locally with a low 'carbon footprint'? Do they come from sustainable sources?
I don't know about the bird seed. Nest box was FSC wood.

25. Is wildlife being destroyed or evicted elsewhere for the wood needed for the wildlife products we buy to help wildlife in our gardens?
Don't know. But it's worth bearing in mind.

Which Wildlife?:
26. Do you consider/encourage all lifecycle stages of creatures and differing needs? Eg. Do you encourage the caterpillar as well as the butterfly?
Unless they are on salad veg, I'll leave them be, (and with veg I'll remove, not spray) but I don't specifically grow food plants that I consider unattractive in a small garden setting such as nettles or garlic mustard.

27. Do you consider needs through autumn & winter months or do most in spring & summer?
I feel I still have a lot to learn, so I'm unsure I do enough in any season. In autumn winter I don't overtidy and when I do cut down some hollow-stemmed plants I will leave the stalks lying around somewhere unobtrusive.

28. Have you also made provision for the needs of nocturnal visitors eg. moths?
I have some moth nectar plants.

29. Do you consider the extent of natural food webs? Most of which is in healthy 'living' soil invisible to most of us and sadly affected by chemical feed & weed treatments, eg for lawns?
I don't think about it very much but I don't weed and feed the lawn either. I mulch with homemade compost and seem to have plenty of worms etc.

As a Gardener:
30. Friend or foe? How do you decide which is what?
I don't think of most things as foes usually, but very large numbers of any one thing which is causing widespread destruction rather than a bit of nibbling and has no predators in the area.

31. What don't you tolerate and why? Is it one stage of a life cycle or part of a food chain (prey providing food &/or predator to control population of others)
There's nothing apart from rosemary beetles that I have a complete no-tolerance policy to. Not even snails.

32. Do you kill any 'pests'? By chemical, biological (introduced pests) &/or mechanical (removal by hand) means?
I will kill some snails which are in large numbers due to a lack of predators/plenty of shelter, also rosemary beetles which are relatively new in UK, appear to have no predators at all and decimated one of my plants to extinction a couple of years ago. Mechanical means (pick off, stamp on).

33. Do you discourage/distact 'pests' with barriers, companion planting &/or plant choice?
Most things planted in my garden are either of no interest to snails or get nibbled by them a bit but not destroyed. I'm skeptical about at least some companion planting. If I want to grow snail-attracting food plants I'll do it in the greenhouse in containers where possible and if I grow runner beans I'll grow them in there until they're a bit bigger and transplant, then put down grit or try out copper rings as deterrent.

34. Do you have pets that pose a threat to the wildlife you encourage? Do you site wildlife things out of danger? Does your cat wear a bell to give birds etc. a chance?
I don't have any pets.

35. Is your garden too tidy? Do you leave spent plants to provide food & shelter through winter & to decompose for wildlife in the soil such as earthworms.
I tidy a little bit but not that much. I also have an alleyway down the side of my house and a couple of other secluded corners where I chuck woody prunings to rot down and I compost softer things.

As an Observer/Custodian of Nature:
36. Is the increased popularity in encouraging & observing wildlife because
a) we want to do our bit to help save/increase biodiversity (ecological)?
b) we yearn to move back to more natural open spaces and an escape from modern life
(romanticism)?
c) it is the thing to be seen to do (a green 'trend)?
d) we've realised the benefits to the garden (horticultural)?
e) we want our children and their's to know/appreciate/enjoy nature (educational)?
f) wildlife can increase our enjoyment of the garden (feel good factor)
or a mix of two or more of these? Rank in order of importance?
I think it's a mix of most but c) I would not be cynical enough to say it's trendiness, I think generally people who do anything at all generally care to some extent. I can't rank the others in order of importance.

37. Do you think, as humans, we tend to try to order/control what can visit our patch of earth? Do we try to harness some wildlife as garden pets?
Yes, although the second point to a lesser extent.

38. Are there any well meaning actions you can think of/know of that are deterimental to the creatures we are trying to help?
Any supplementary feeding that may lead to dependence among young animals which will end when the person moves house.

Finally:
39. Can there be such a thing as 'Wildlife Gardening' as one is natural and wild and the other is harnessing and changng the natural environment?
In the UK most of our landscape has been intensively worked on in some ways for centuries anyway, so I'm unsure to what extent we can say we have any wilderness. As far as I know some 'natural' landscapes such as bogs, wildflower meadows, heaths etc have come about due to man's changing the landscape in the first place. Some conservation efforts include coppicing woodlands to let in more light for wildflowers etc - definitely changing the natural environment, but in ways which have been shown to be beneficial to certain species.

40. Anything further/different you wish to add?

I'm probably relatively new to wildlife gardening compared to some on this forum, so my answers might be very different in another five years.