Tips Of Attracting Birds To Your Garden

For optimal hedges, vegetation and wildlife provide the hedge with the following: moisture, sun, and shelter. Keep an eye on hedges that are grown on land with less favorable conditions; more hedging material may be required due to lower nutrient availability. The following tips will help you make your hedges more beneficial for birds and encourage them to stay in your garden, orchard, or smallholding all year round: -

• Prune trees next to hedges later in the winter when trees have fewer leaves. This way you can prevent branches from resting against hedges where they might damage them.
• Backfill between tree/shrub roots hedges (if possible) in the winter when hedges are dormant so that they will not be damaged by frost.
• Do not plant hedges too closely together, otherwise light levels could drop below the level required for vegetation to thrive.
• Avoid hedging along borders where hedges material can easily spread into neighboring gardens. This may also help to prevent hedges seeds from being carried away in the wind.
• Do not prune hedges in spring or early summer because this is when hedging material is most needed for birds nesting in hedges at this time of year.
• Avoid using garden chemicals near your hedges that might harm local wildlife — instead, use natural deterrents such as bird scarers and netting to deter potential predators from attacking small birds living in your hedges.
• When hedging hedges use only hedging material from your hedges or from a neighbor’s hedges up to 500 meters away and preferably in another parish to ensure that you do not introduce non-local plant species into your hedges. This way you will help to protect existing hedges vegetation and encourage wildlife, such as birds, mammals, and insects, which depend on the hedges for their survival.
• Keep river banks well-vegetated (with grasses or wildflowers) around waterways to prevent soil erosion and the loss of hedges material over water which could harm local biodiversity — remove vines such as ivy growing over hedges at least once a year; if left unchecked these vines can grow so densely that hedges vegetation cannot survive.
• If you are hedging along the edge of woodland, hedges planted too close to trees can dry out in summer because of lower moisture levels, but avoid hedging more than 1m away from tree trunks because squirrels may damage young hedging plants by digging or climbing on them.
• Many hedges contain rare species not just for their parish but also nationally and internationally; please do not try to dig out these hedge plants.

• Make sure the location of your hedges is suitable for its inhabitants’ needs before planting new hedges. Some hedges with old trees in particular, require low branches in order to provide nesting sites for small birds such as sparrows and robins.
• Hedges can be a heaven for small mammals such as mice, rabbits, and voles; some hedges may need to be maintained to prevent them from deteriorating and becoming unsuitable habitats for these species.
• Hedging provides shelter and food for insects such as bees and butterflies which are essential pollinators of hedges plants such as blackberries.
• Hedges also provides vital roosting sites for birds at night — do not cut back branches far beyond the main trunk because this will kill off roosting birds overnight; fresh green leaves that sprout from old wood in springtime provide good nesting material for birds that cannot build their own nests like the robin — hedges which are regularly cut back during winter can result in hedges nesting birds such as sparrows and wrens not having the materials to build nests for their young.
• If you have hedges with old trees along the hedges, ensure that there is sufficient distance between them to allow adequate light levels for healthy hedges vegetation.
• Hedges provide shelter from strong winds on exposed land; keep this in mind when pruning hedges because wildlife could be at risk of exposure to high winds especially during storms — avoid hedging individual trees within woodlands because these particular hedges will need additional protection from woodland mammals such as deer.