Start with the Soil, Then Choose Your Plants

A wildlife-friendly garden does not need to be wild or untidy. It needs to be generous: plenty of flowers for nectar, dense cover for shelter, and a supply of food right through the year. Native plants do the heavy lifting because British insects evolved alongside them. A native oak supports hundreds of caterpillar species, whilst many fashionable imports support almost none. You do not need a meadow to make a difference, though. A border, a balcony and a few pots will bring in bees, hoverflies, butterflies and birds within a single season.

Begin by looking at what you already have. Most UK soils are either heavy clay, light and sandy, or somewhere in between. Lavender sulks in wet clay but thrives on free-draining chalk or sand. Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) and meadowsweet will happily take a damp corner where little else survives. Match the plant to the ground and you will spend far less time watering and coaxing. Plant pot-grown perennials in autumn or early spring, when the soil is warm and moist, and water them well for their first summer.

Planting for Pollinators

The single most useful thing you can do is keep flowers open from March to October. Aim for at least three different plants in bloom at any one time, so that a bee emerging early or a late-flying red admiral always finds something.

• Spring: cowslips, lungwort, and native bluebells in the shady spots; flowering currant and apple blossom for early queen bumblebees.
• Early summer: foxgloves, red campion, ox-eye daisy and wild strawberry. Foxgloves are short-lived but seed freely, so let a few flower spikes stand and scatter.
• Midsummer: lavender, wild marjoram, common knapweed, field scabious and viper's bugloss. This is the peak period, so be generous with quantity as well as variety.
• Late season: betony, teasel, hemp agrimony and ivy. Ivy flowers in autumn and is one of the best late nectar sources in the country — a mature hedge or wall of it is a genuine asset.

Plant in generous drifts rather than single specimens. A metre-square patch of lavender is far more useful to a foraging bee than five lonely plants dotted about. Avoid double-flowered varieties: their petals are so tightly packed that insects cannot reach the nectar.

Add Water, However Small

Water is the quickest way to multiply the life in your garden. Even a buried washing-up bowl will be visited by birds, hedgehogs, frogs and damselflies. Site it in a partly shaded spot so it does not overheat or evaporate in July, and make sure there is a gently sloping edge or a few stones stacked inside so that anything that falls in can climb out.

If you have room for something larger, a half-barrel or a lined hole about 60cm deep and 1.5m across will support water lilies, marsh marigold and native oxygenators. Do not stock it with fish, which eat tadpoles and larvae. Leave the water to find its own balance and it usually will, given three or four months and no chemical treatments.

Keep a shallow dish of clean water on the ground for hedgehogs and another on a ledge or bird table for drinking and bathing. Refresh both regularly, especially in hot spells and during hard frosts when natural water is locked away.

Leave the Seed Heads Standing

Resist the urge to cut everything back in October. Seed heads are food, shelter and structure all at once, and they look beautiful rimed with frost.

• Teasel and globe thistle hold their shape for months and goldfinches will strip them bare.
• Sunflowers, nigella and honesty feed finches and sparrows well into winter.
• Sedum, echinacea and rudbeckia keep their heads through the coldest weeks and provide somewhere for overwintering insects to tuck in.
• Hawthorn haws, rowan berries and ivy berries are staples for thrushes, blackcaps and fieldfares arriving from Scandinavia.

Cut back in late February or March, just as the new growth starts to push. If you can, leave the stems in a loose heap at the back of the border for a fortnight so that anything sheltering inside can escape.

Shelter, Layers and a Little Untidiness

Food brings wildlife in; cover persuades it to stay. Build your garden in layers — ground cover, perennials, shrubs, and a hedge or small tree if space allows. A mixed native hedge of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and field maple is one of the most valuable habitats you can plant, offering nesting sites, catkins, blossom and berries. It takes a few years to knit together, but it will outlive most of the garden around it.

Add a log pile in a shady corner, leave a patch of long grass, and let fallen leaves gather under the shrubs. A compost heap does double duty, feeding your soil and housing slow-worms and hedgehogs. And please, put the strimmer away: a tidy garden in September is a hungry garden in January. A little deliberate shabbiness is the whole point, and the bees, birds and butterflies will thank you for it.