Jayne set up Ware Swift Group in 2017, which you can read about in part one of her guest blog ‘Taking Swift Action for Endangered Birds’ but here she gives us a personal insight into her garden, where she helps all wildlife. 

A garden for wildlife

At home I practise wildlife-friendly gardening - so I don't use chemicals, I leave areas of the lawn to grow long and I don't put anything in the council's brown bin. All our food waste goes in our compost bin. Branches, twigs and clippings from garden maintenance become either dead hedging or piles here and there, offering homes for invertebrates. 

I built a pond a few years back which quickly became a home for many insects and frogs. This year it was jam-packed with frogspawn. I learn a lot from just watching what is in there. I saw a small slug-like creature with a long tail and identified it as a Rat-tailed Maggot, which is the lava of a hoverfly. 

Last November, we saw a small Hedgehog. I checked with the local Hedgehog rescue and weighed it - it was 200g - far too small to hibernate I was told. It was fostered over the winter and came back to us in February, weighing nearly 1kg! I have a Hedgehog house which I made and two Hedgehog feeding stations - one plastic, the other made out of a cardboard box. One had a camera when I was checking for any siblings to the small Hedgehog we rescued. 

I have many bird boxes and some are used by the Blue Tits and Great Tits.  There are lots of water bowls and bird baths, which I top up from the rainwater I collect. I have eight water butts/containers and recently created a rain garden.

I have just one outdoor light which is motion activated as I know light pollution affects insects which in turn will affect the bats we see feeding around our house at night.

Making my rain garden 

Our local Wilder Communities Officer, Kate Sheard, showed me a rain garden on the Wetlands Trust website and I was really impressed. It wasn't long before an issue that became apparent with our house meant a rain garden would actually serve a second important purpose. I had a drain survey and discovered that the main drainpipe from our roof is either completely blocked 1m below ground or had disintegrated. I was concerned that repairing it would mean digging up some established shrubs which I didn't want to lose. Then it occurred to me that I could divert the water away from the house by using a rain garden. 

I didn't want to buy anything new for it if I could avoid it and a friend stopped by on the way to the local tip. I spotted a baby bath in the back of his car and it is now the flood plain. I got three plastic buckets from someone on Freegle but realised that when I stacked them up, it would be too high.  I have used one of their containers for the first collection pond but in the end bought three recycled plastic long narrow troughs to become the other three ponds carrying water to the flood plain. I am growing watercress in one of these. 

The bricks are for decoration and allow a safe haven for invertebrates. These came from someone else on Freegle, who also gave me a water butt. The troughs above ground are propped up on about six concrete blocks that I spotted while on a forest walk. The decorative concrete slabs on the other side also came from this find.

The rain garden is still relatively new so I haven't seen many insects in it yet apart from daphnia and a moth and wasp that I rescued from drowning. I have seen frog swimming in one of the ponds - no idea how it got in as it's about two to three feet above ground! It's a bit deep for the birds to bathe in but I have put in the odd brick and have seen a Robin drinking from there, although the birds have a container of muddy water at ground level and a bird bath nearby, which they use a lot. 

My wildlife-friendly gardening tips and thoughts

Wildlife-friendly gardening frees you up to have time to enjoy your garden more so you can watch the wildlife there. Don't worry about being too tidy and keeping the lawn neat. You can be creative by leaving shapes in the lawn that aren't mowed and you will be rewarded by seeing so many more butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets. I counted 11 Meadow Brown butterflies in my garden last year and am starting to see them again this year, along with a variety of other butterflies and moths.   

As I've got older, I've come to realise the important things in life are, in fact, generally free and very simple. I get great enjoyment from helping wildlife and, as I'm lucky enough to have a garden, I see it as land that I manage to help the wildlife who actually need it for their existence. With chemicals being used to grow our intensively farmed food, wildlife is now more easily found where we live and our gardens can be havens for many species - so long as we garden with wildlife in mind. A beautifully manicured garden full of exotics may appear wonderul but it is a desert for wildlife. The least we can do is have parts of our garden left untouched for wildlife to make their home and find food.

Find out more

If you have been inspired by Jayne and her approach to wildlife-friendly gardening, you can find lots of tips and ideas for projects on our Wildlife Gardening webpage here.