Wild Gardens

It is never nice to have your garden criticised by a visitor or neighbour. Just as we tend to overrate our driving skills and take criticism very personally, so our gardens are our own territory, organized to our own taste, needs and convenience. But just reflect on the fact that your garden, whatever its size, is also home to countless living creatures, each of which has taken precisely the same length of time to evolve as you and me. Each creature, be it bird, mouse, earwig, earthworm, dragonfly, wasp, bee, moth, beetle or whatever, has its own needs and instincts, each requires sources of food and places of shelter, just like you and me, and each has its own crucial place in the food chain and the greater web of life. As wild places are gradually reduced, so our gardens become ever more important habitats for survival.

So my garden may be too untidy for somebody's taste, but it does contain a rich variety of plants, and a range of places that our fellow creatures can use to good effect. There is a great danger that an over-tidy garden will become sterile and relatively lifeless. Concrete patios, tarmac driveways, decking, cemented walls, sprayed flowerbeds and immaculately cut lawns may well be the fashion of the moment, but they are anathema to most wildlife. Remember as well that too much concrete and tarmac will reduce the ability of the ground to absorb the extraordinary rain we have had recently. If we in Thurles all pave over our gardens, the flooding downstream in Clonmel will worsen.

So as autumn sets in, leaves drop on your lawn, plants die back and the migrant birds begin their travels to avoid a Tipperary winter, don't be in too much of a rush to tidy everything up. Do you really want your neighbour to stand back and pretend to admire your immaculately scrubbed but sterile environment? Leave some grass a few inches long; this will draw in a range of insects that are essential rungs in the food chain and provide regular meals for any mammals that may live nearby. Rake up your leaves by all means, but leave some in heaps (perhaps held together in a ring of wire mesh) to provide shelter and hibernation space for insects and mammals like hedgehogs. Similarly a rough and ready pile of old logs will give wonderful protection and sustenance, especially for beetles, frogs and toads. Nest boxes are easily erected, and a good hedges give both nesting sites for your birds and 'roadways' for mammals and insects too travel along in relative safety. Leave seed heads on

A recent newspaper article bemoaned the decline of traditional bird species like the lapwing and corn bunting, with comments that the decline was probably irreversible because governments are not doing enough to halt the decline. If true, that is a terrible indictment of modern society. But why on earth do we need governments to organise everything? Are we so helpless and so controlled by the tsars of fashion that we cannot take responsibility for our own pieces of the earth and manage them in a nature-friendly way? Many of you will have children who have studied ecology, perhaps at the Cabragh Wetlands. Why not give them a little project by sending them out to do an audit of your garden's nature-friendliness. How many good features can they find in your garden that will boost the chances of some insect, plant, bird or mammal surviving the winter to breed again next spring? Any feedback will be welcomed, and we would welcome the chance to share ideas.