Issue #10: Creating Wildlife Oases
Or, "How to attract the birds and the bees"
Welcome back to the Climate Catalogue Reader. If you’re a new subscriber, you can catch up with us by clicking here. If you haven’t already subscribed to this newsletter and have received it as a forward, do consider subscribing and sharing this newsletter with others using the links below:
In the previous issue, we explored the idea of “Rewilding”, a wildlife conservation strategy that is based on the ability of certain keystone species to bring degenerated ecosystems back from the brink. This strategy is generally applied to large “ecoregions”, or biosphere reserves - even Oostvaardersplassen, a relatively small rewilding project, covers an area of 56 square kilometers. The Knepp Estate rewilding project in Britain covers about 14 square kilometers of mixed-use farmland - molecular, in proportion multi-state Life Bison rewilding project in Northern Europe.
As small as it may be, 14 square kilometers is still far more land than most urban and suburban dwellers have access to. Hyper-dense city planning and suburban fencing of private property lines means that there are no vast tracts of land anywhere: we cannot possibly have large herbivores milling about in our cities (although, in some cases, we already do). So how can small property owners rewild their land?
[A book]
The Garden Jungle, or Gardening to Save the Planet
by Dave Goulson, published by Penguin Random House in 2019
This book is a SIX HOUR read.
While large-scale conservation strategies apply to large animals, small-scale habitats can actually create havens for small creatures such as insects and birds. In fact, you could argue that having a small habitat for pollinators and birds in your garden is beneficial to the environment since several migratory species carry seeds, pollen and other genetic information over several hundreds of miles.
The author, Dave Goulson has written this book based on his suburban garden in Sussex. He guides the reader through the elements of a “garden jungle” - what creates a balance and what has worked in his context - extrapolating more generalised canons from his observations.
To begin with, Goulson talks about the role of plants in any wildlife habitat - as a source of shelter for various small animals, and a source of food for some. He focuses on the origins of various plants sold at local garden stores: and the role of exotic plants in local landscapes. More importantly, exotic plants that resist the local fauna are not particularly good for a wildlife habitat - instead, they keep the wildlife at bay. So, when choosing plants for one’s garden jungle, the focus should be on native plants - particularly wildflowers, shrubs, and fruiting plants. Beyond this, allowing nature some agency on one’s land is a great idea, and you can start by not compulsively de-weeding, de-pesting, and over-fertilising your lawn, letting it grow into a “wildflower meadow”.
Pesticides would lay waste to a microfauna wildlife habitat. Although many pesticides are sprayed year-round to “deal with pests”, their efficacy is highly contentious. In fact, most pesticides only serve to drive pests to become resistant, and therefore wreak havoc despite all the extra money you’ve put in. Rather than spend a large portion of your profits on killing some of the pests, and most of the beneficial insects (including the bees), we should create habitats conducive for pest-predators, such as earwigs, to thrive. Such creatures would eat the pests, and perhaps some of our plants, although not to the extent that the pests would have done anyway.
Insects are perhaps the most important non-human actors in a small garden habitat. Goulson describes the role of various kinds of bees, wasps and flies, and explains their prerequisites for inhabiting your garden. The provision of food, in the form of pollen- and nectar-laden flowers, and shelter, ranging from man-made bee hotels to discarded logs of wood or branches, into which certain solitary bee species bore holes.
Pollinators are not the only important insects in a small wildlife habitat: the author also talks about moths, butterflies, caterpillars and beetles, insects which attract birds, mammals, and small reptiles to your garden, looking for a feast. By creating a habitat and food source for such insects (many of whose ecological roles are believed to be beyond a rung in the trophic ladder), one effectively creates a habitat that attracts local fauna and by extension, local flora carried in the form of seeds or pollen.
Water is quite literally the source of all life, and water bodies play a key role in a garden jungle. The presence of water in a garden - be it a bird bath or a pond, attracts an entirely different class of animals. Amphibians, all manner of water insects, the birds and reptiles that prey on these insects, are all attracted to the garden. The water body need not have fish, but can host several riparian plants along its edge. The presence of water in your garden can be seen from above, meaning that local or migratory birds and insects that would not otherwise stop at that location may pause for a drink, and perhaps even nest there for a short time. If the water body is natural (i.e., not concretised or artificially waterproofed), then the presence of water benefits the soil and the local groundwater system, acting as a sink for deluges or floods when it rains.
Lastly, he describes the advantages of fruit and vegetable plants in your garden - productive plants that can reduce your carbon footprint, while attracting all sorts of local wildlife to play the role of pollinator and pest-predator to your vegetable garden. While a person cannot possibly produce everything they need for sustenance in a garden, a large portion of our vegetable and fruit can be grown in small vegetable gardens.
Even though the author is a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, heading the Goulson Lab, he has written this book in terms that are easy for even amateur gardeners to understand - which is what makes this book a great read. And if the sheer anecdotal/experimental science is not enough to convince you to pick up this book, he includes recipes for rather appetising sweet and savoury preparations made with produce foraged from his garden.
[A video]
Rewild Your Garden!
A video on Dave Goulson’s YouTube channel
This is a 26 MINUTE long video.
Tap on the title to access the video. (Watch in 1080p, since it’s easier to see the insects and pollinators on his plants at this quality)
Dave Goulson may be the eccentric neighbour whose backyard is full of all manner of “undesirable” creatures, but he knows how to grow a jungle.
In this video, he takes the viewers on a tour of his 2-acre garden (the one upon which his book The Garden Jungle is based), and shows us the remarkable habitats the garden has created for many insects and birds. Although the book is far more comprehensive if you really want to create your own “jungle garden”, this video serves as visual evidence of the fact that the methods he preaches in his book really do work; in nearly every scene of the video, you can see insects flitting about, alighting onto flowers and buzzing about rather busily. Goulson leads us through all the aspects of his garden, as talked about in his book: the wildflower patches, the meadows, the pond, the orchards, and the vegetable patches, in each case, pointing out what wildlife can be found there. He also takes us through the landscape to look at some of the domestic and rescued birds that roam free in the suburban jungle.
As he mentions in the beginning of his video, the “garden jungle” strategy to attract wild insect and bird life to your home does not require a large garden such as his; it can be achieved in a small backyard or even a window-box, if that’s all the space you have. The key is to choose the right plants to attract pollinators from your local area, and keep a water dish out for birds and insects to drink from. And this video is a great place to start.
Thank you for reading through this issue of the Climate Catalogue Reader. If you love all the new things you’re learning from this Reader, you can show it by tapping the little heart at the bottom of the newsletter.