With the nights drawing in and the trees showing off their autumn colours, it’s the perfect time to give nature a helping hand around your business grounds or garden. A few small changes can make a big difference for wildlife as they prepare for the colder months ahead.
In the garden and grounds of your business there are a few jobs that you can be doing to help the wildlife that may frequent them. The most important is try to repurpose any “Garden Waste” such as leaves, fallen branches, and cuttings from shrubs and bushes.
- Don’t be to tidy, by all means rake up leaves from formal lawns, but leaves in borders and wild areas let them remain where they are and worms will pull them down into the soil, this adding great organic matter to the soil.
- If you have had any fallen branches in the recent high winds, make log piles and dead hedges or bug snugs with the branches.
- Make a leave pile in a corner of the grounds where the prevailing wind blows them naturally, these piles are great habitat for hibernating hedgehogs, insects, amphibians and reptiles.
- Consider siting some manmade hedgehog shelters, these can be made quite easily and there are lots of plans online, or they can be bought purpose built.
- Now is a good time to wash and disinfect any bird feeders, tables and water receptacles you may have, also to clean out any bird boxes in preparation for next spring. However, please leave bat boxes well alone as it is an offence to open them and disturb the bats. Most bat boxes have an opening at the bottom this allowing any waste fall out naturally.
- Start or continue feeding birds with the newly cleaned and disinfected feeders and tables. Providing a regular supply of high-energy food such as fat balls, black sunflower seeds, and dried insects is a great way to help and retain the local bird populations as the natural sources of food become harder to locate.
- If you have sunflowers or thistles in you borders, do not remove them when they have died off, as the seedheads are a great attraction for many seed eating birds. Putting out unwanted fruit such as apples, plums and pears might bring in some winter visitors to the feast, such as waxwings and fieldfares.
- Providing a source of water is equally important, especially during cold spells when other sources might be frozen over. By placing a rubber ball to float on top of an open water receptacle it will help prevent this from freezing over.
By undertaking some of these points, you will help the local wildlife get through the most difficult time of year for them, and possibly bring many colourful visitors such as goldfinches, chaffinches, blue tits, and the ubiquitous robin into your gardens or grounds.
