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Wildlife Gardening

Beneficial Garden Insects and How to Attract Them to Your Garden

Ladybird

Beneficial insects are essential in keeping our gardens and farms healthy. Some pollinate plants that produce our food. Others eat pests that would otherwise destroy our food crops. They also help break down dead organic material and recycle nutrients back into the soil. We rely on these tiny insects more….

Watch out for hibernating hedgehogs

Look out for Hedgehogs

This weekend, while out in the garden clearing a build-up of dead leaves and layers of last-season’s montbretia foliage, I uncovered a prickly, but very welcome surprise. A hibernating hedgehog! Its spines flexed involuntarily, once… twice… and then it was still again. I whipped out the smartphone and took one quick photograph (above), before replacing the leaf-litter, tucking….

Digging, for the birds!

Robin With Worm

Regular IW contributor Albert Nolan reflects on how a bit of winter digging benefits the bird life in his garden.   It was a day when you would have fought to have a shovel in your hand as the icy wind slipped easily through layers of clothes. I was finishing off a….

Give weeds a break in your garden

All over Ireland gardeners are on a mission to eradicate weeds… but is there a different approach that can help the gardener AND help Ireland’s wildlfie? **** Weeds! The very mention of them can send gardeners into spasm. Throughout summer well into autumn we fight a never-ending battle with weeds…..

Giving birds a leg up on the property ladder

Round ones, square ones, big ones, small ones, wooden ones… even ones made from recycled election posters: nest boxes, just like the birds that use them, come in all shapes and sizes. They’re a great wildlife win-win — giving birds a safe, secure place to raise their young, and giving….

Attention gardeners: weeds… they’re not all bad, you know!

Weeds! At this time of year they’re everywhere, and the very mention of them can send the avid gardener into spasm. Keeping them in check is a never ending battle, and all too often it’s one that the weeds seem to be winning! Natural success stories The things that make….