gardening
Beneficial Garden Insects and How to Attract Them to Your Garden
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….
Make your garden bird-friendly
In this guest post Tony Manhart, founder and editor-in-chief at Gardening Dream, shares his tips for making your garden more bird-friendly. Whether young or old, many people enjoy birdwatching. It can be a relaxing way to pass the time, and it is interesting to learn about the different birds that….
Watch out for hibernating 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….
Newt discovered in Tipperary potato patch
This account of a smooth newt found hibernating in an allotment in Co. Tipperary last November was sent in by Ireland’s Wildlife reader and avid gardener Andy Dawson and his young son Ethan. It’s a notable record, since the Irish Wildlife Trust’s National Newt Survey had received no newt records from Tipperary up to and including….
Gardeners urged to phase out peat
Ireland’s peat bogs are under threat… and gardeners are being urged to do their part to conserve them by finding alternatives to peat compost. Celebrity gardeners are calling for pete-based compost to be phased out completely and replaced with more environmentally responsible choices. Irish peat bogs are a unique wildlife….