When you have a little bit of outdoors and greenery at home, you are often the host of many insects and animals. Having a garden often attracts small animals, which come to take refuge and sometimes, to flourish. Maintaining biodiversity in your garden is an essential and positive gesture for nature. So how can we make all these little creatures feel at home? The Modern Gentleman has written an article to teach you how to protect the fauna in your garden!
Why plan to preserve the biodiversity of your green space?
In France, 17 million people have a garden. The surface occupied by them, in a hectare, is more important than the one attributed to the French natural reserves. We need to understand that maintaining our country’s biodiversity is also an individual issue.
Biodiversity is a national and international issue. Let’s remember that it is essential for many reasons:
- Natural environments that sequester carbon and allow for air purification,
- Pollination, which allows the development of flowers, fruits, vegetables…
- Plants that avoid drying the soil, and reduce the risk of flooding…
- Thus, your garden can collect many species, animals, and plants, which will be useful on a larger scale, and which it is necessary to preserve.
How to preserve biodiversity in your garden?
We will assume that you are not a great gardener, nor a great handyman. In this way, we can propose you simple, quick and efficient ways to preserve biodiversity in your green space.
Don’t mow the whole space, and leave some corners uncultivated
As a first gesture to preserve the biodiversity of your green space, we advise you to leave a space uncultivated. This means that, in your plot, you will choose a place that you will leave in its natural state:
- You let the plant species grow without mowing them,
- No attempt is made to remove weeds,
- No new plant species are planted in this area,
- No weed killers or chemicals are used in this area.
This fallow area will be the richest environment in your garden regarding biodiversity. Many animal species will be able to take refuge there, feed there, and reproduce there… This one also allows the balance of your garden, and the maintenance of certain natural predators near your home. These will be particularly useful when fighting against the devastation of your vegetable garden!
Create natural spaces for the fauna in your garden
If you want to help some species to settle comfortably in your home, you can create spaces for them.
As a first step, why not build or install an insect hotel?
There are many shapes and sizes, and these, placed at the bottom of the garden, will be useful to many species:
- Ladybugs,
- Solitary bees,
- Butterflies,
- And many others!
This one that we propose you will be able to shelter many species. It is resistant and designed to prevent moisture from getting in. Of course, it is delivered with everything necessary for the installation!
For bees that are not solitary, you can install a real hive. This one will require a little learning and maintenance, but it will have many advantages:
- Pollination of the plants on your land and around,
- Maintenance and protection of the species,
- Production of honey…
We propose you, for the first time, a hive in food plastic, which will have the advantage of being easy to maintain. Note that this one will be more appropriate to the plains than to the mountainous environment.
The fauna of a garden is not only composed of insects! It is also composed of small mammals, birds, etc…
Among the small inoffensive animals, but useful in the garden, we find for example the hedgehogs. These are often found in our French countryside, and unfortunately, on our roads.
In order to allow a hedgehog and/or his little family to be in complete safety, you have the possibility to provide yourself with a small hedgehog house to put at the bottom of the garden. Hedgehogs are also fond of piles of wood and organic waste.
They will help you to maintain the balance of the biodiversity of your garden, they will save your salads from slugs, or even from grasshoppers. In short, a gardener’s friend must be protected!
Diversify the plant species present in your green space
In order to maintain a good biodiversity in your garden, it is also advised to diversify the plant species present in it.
In order to do so, you can plant several plants. Of course, you can start by starting a vegetable garden. This one will be composed of several edible species for you afterward, of which a particular part you will pay back to nature (roots, leaves, peelings…). To accentuate the biological diversity of the vegetable garden, do not hesitate to plant old or even regional vegetables.
In the rest of your green space, you can plant fruit trees, flowers, different varieties of hedges, etc. All these species, which will evolve and communicate with each other, will be the source of future biological richness.
In conclusion, there are many ways to preserve biodiversity in your garden. These will not always require knowledge and effort. It is within everyone’s reach to take care of nature and its components. We hope that this article has given you some answers and food for thought on what you could do in your garden!