Do you have a wildlife garden?

Do you have a wildlife garden? if you do tell us about it here.

I should love to know if anyone has a pond, do you get any creatures coming down to drink from it?

we used to have a pond, we had to build a small ramp for hedgehogs after having to rescue one that had fallen in.
Please make sure if you have a pond there is a place where small animals who do fall in can climb out safely

good point always make sure ponds are safe places for wildlife to visit

Have a wonderful wildlife garden, rabbits, lots of birds visit, rabbits, two doves have nested in the holly tree, baby rabbits, a hedgehog, more rabbits, the occasional visit from the local fox and even more rabbits.

that sounds wonderful I love foxes, do you have problems with the rabbits munching on your plants?

Yes it is wonderfull and yes I do have problems with the rabbits munching on plants they love runner beans, planted out 4 lots last year at first I thought it was the slugs untill I caught them one morning merrily having their breakfast, have the wonderfull idea this year of putting out some rabbit food together with some carrots lettuce etc., to try to fill them up a bit will keep you informed on what happens. :)

I think you will just get very fat rabbits, but your garden sounds great with loads to go round, and still enough for you.
I had the same problem years ago, I had to bury chicken wire in the ground front and back of my runner beans not forgetting the sides up to a height rabbits cant jump over.
You have to bury it or they just dig under.
I know if they had really tried they could still have burrowed under but it did seem just enough to discourage them. That and the fact that my big ginger cat took to sleeping in the middle of the row.

Hello Woodbine, ended putting wire round last year on the 4th lot but didn't bury it, I did start them in pots that time, they seemed to ignore them once they got to a couple of foot high. Hav'nt planted anything yet this year with the lousy weather, going to start everything off in my new plastic greenhouse.(hope it's strong enough in strong winds)

Well - sort of.... flying foxes ate one of my paw paws, a possum had a dance among my seedlings, and some cockatoos had a feast of passionfruit. The thing is, they don't take too much, so I don't mind. I love to sit out in the garden and watch the parrots eating the blossom at the top of my paperbark tree (a gum tree variety). I also love watching willy wagtails cavort on the top of the fence. Sometimes we are treated to the sight of a blue-tongue lizard, too. And sometimes we see honey-eaters of various types eating bottle-brush flowers. A kookubuura will visit from time to time: he perches on the clothes line, treating us to his loud laughter. When my youngest was still at home, he had a possum in his bedroom: it slept in a narrow gap between his wardrobe and the wall, and he fed it plums.

But...other wildlife is a pain: I was terrified when our cat brought in a brown snake, and not too happy to find a redback spider under one of my polystyrene seed boxes. These are poisonous creatures.

If I were still in West Yorkshire I would love to find a hedgehog visiting, and would enjoy watching all the birdlife. I would also enjoy the lack of poisonous creatures.

I have bits of a wildlife garden. We purposely left long wild grass around part of the pond, I have Beetle boxes and Bumble bee boxes. We have lots of bushes and flowers in the summer. A lavender bush has gone mad, but we have left it because the bees love it. That sort of thing.

I think beetle boxes, are a grand idea and a good way to get kids interested, kids seem to have a natural affinity with creepy crawlies

I originally planned to turn part of our back garden into a veggie patch but Nature had other ideas. One side is so thick with random plants my ferrets get lost and the other side, even though I cleared a lot out is being taken over by the mint and lavender...oh and the ivy.

I've seen cats visit, big black birds and magpies visit when I put out pie crusts and lots of little birds frequent my feeder. Mainly great tits, over winter the local robin(s) got rather rotund. Around October last year, when the feeder first went out so few birds visited the seeds tended to sprout but apparently the tweet has got around because if I should dare to go out into my own back garden I get twittered at from the nearby hedge for being between them and that big tube of sunflower seeds.

We have a mouse or family of too. I found my sunflower seeds bag chewed into and quite the pile of husks next to it. I did catch one of them but when I was nice and put it in a deep box with food/water/bedding it got out so it's somewhere in the house again.

I'd very much like a hedgehog to visit us, we have tons of slugs, millipedes, centipedes, beetles, etc. for it to feast on and a compost heap to sleep in too.

Well I give up the rabbits have won, will have to invest in a lot of netting next year, they ate the tops of my lettuce and beetroot but placed more netting round and actually ate the first of my lettuce last night, havn't managed to have one strawberry this year but have cut back some really thorny rosa rugosa and placed it round the strawberries with some more netting. Was hoping for a really colourful garden and invested in lots of summer flowering bulbs, nice tall gladiolas etc and yes you guessed it the dear little darlings have eaten the lot why can't they eat the weeds not one has been touched.

Good Question, Why dont rabbits ever eat the weeds?
One of life's great mysteries