Planning a Year of Colour in a Wildlife Garden

Plan by month, not by colour

Most wildlife gardens are planted the way any border is planted: a spring visit to the nursery, a trolley full of whatever is looking good that weekend, and a garden that peaks for three glorious weeks in June and then quietly gives up. Insects do not work to that timetable. A queen bumblebee emerging in late February needs a meal when almost nothing is open, and a red admiral fattening up in October needs nectar long after the last buddleia has gone over.

The trick is to think in months rather than in flower beds. Aim for a rolling four to six weeks of overlap between each flowering group, and you will feed something every single day from February to November. A garden that always has a little in flower beats one that has everything in flower at once.

February to April: the hungry gap

This is the hardest stretch of the year, and the one worth planting first. Early bees are running on fumes, so single, simple flowers with accessible nectar are essential.

• Goat willow and grey willow – catkins in February and March on both male and female plants, and one of the great caterpillar larders for the rest of the year.
• Blackthorn – a froth of white on bare black stems in March and April, then sloes for the thrushes, and a dense, spiny nesting hedge for small birds.
• Hazel – catkins from January, plus nuts in autumn and honest, straight poles for the crafts described below.
• Coltsfoot, dandelion, primrose and lesser celandine – low-growing, unglamorous and enormously valuable for queens of early bumblebees. Leave a patch of lawn unmown until May and you will be feeding them for free.

May to July: the great flush

Cover this stretch with native perennials and it will look after itself. Hawthorn, wild cherry and crab apple all flower now, bridging the gap between willow and the summer meadows, and the long, hot days of June belong to cottage-garden natives.

• Foxgloves and red campion – biennial and perennial, both happy in light shade, both rich in nectar.
• Bird's-foot trefoil – the larval food plant of the common blue, and a superb nectar source if you let it sprawl along a path edge.
• Viper's bugloss and field scabious – favourites of bees and butterflies on any sunny, drained spot.
• Oxeye daisy and meadow crane's-bill – cheerful, tough, and quick to establish in a new meadow patch.

Keep a sunny corner of stinging nettles, cut on a three-year rotation a third at a time, so there is always fresh growth for small tortoiseshell, peacock and red admiral caterpillars. It is the single most useful thing a wildlife garden can do and it costs nothing but a little untidiness.

August to October: the long finish

Late summer is when nectar dries up in ordinary gardens and when pollinators are building fat reserves for winter. Extend the season with a second flush by cutting early perennials back by a third at the end of June – yarrow, crane's-gbill and knapweed all respond well.

• Common and greater knapweed, devil's-bit scabious, hemp agrimony and purple loosestrife – all flower into September and beyond.
• Wild carrot and sneezewort – flat, open heads that hoverflies and beetles can land on easily.
• Ivy – the great unsung hero of the autumn garden, flowering from September to November when virtually nothing else will, then holding its berries through the coldest weeks.
• Ling and bell heather – if your soil is acid, these flower late and feed bumblebees when the rest of the garden has finished.

Berries, hips and haws for winter birds

Once the flowers are over, a wildlife garden has to switch to feeding fruit-eaters. Plant a mix, because different birds favour different fruit and a mixed hedge ripens over a longer window.

• Hawthorn – haws, stripped by redwings and fieldfares in hard weather.
• Holly – plant a male somewhere near the females or you will get flowers and no berries.
• Rowan and crab apple – fruit for thrushes and blackbirds, blossom for bees in spring.
• Guelder rose and spindle – brilliant autumn colour, luminous berries, and moths into the bargain.
• Dog rose – hips for blackbirds, and enough spare fruit for a bottle of syrup.
• Alder buckthorn and buckthorn – the larval food plants of the brimstone butterfly, worth every inch of space.
• Elder – flowers for hoverflies in June, berries for blackcaps in September.

Do not tidy these shrubs in autumn. If a hedge needs trimming, do it in late winter after the fruit has gone, never in the middle of berry season.

Seed heads, stems and a harvest for hedgerow crafts

Leave everything standing through the winter and you gain twice over: goldfinches on the teasel, wrens and ladybirds sheltering in the stems, and a supply of material for the old hedge crafts.

• Teasel – dried heads for the birds, and historically used on a frame to raise the nap on woollen cloth. Cut a few for the house; they last for years.
• Wild carrot, poppy and greater knapweed – sculptural dried seed heads for winter arrangements.
• Hazel coppice – cut on a seven-year cycle for hurdles, bean poles, pea sticks and woven garden obelisks.
• Willow and dogwood – brightly coloured rods for weaving baskets, plant supports and the frames of a dead hedge.

When you do cut back in late February or March, bundle the stems and leave them in a quiet corner for a fortnight before composting, so anything overwintering inside can crawl out. Build the prunings into a dead hedge along a boundary instead of burning them: it is a wildlife stack, a windbreak and a screen in one, and it costs nothing.

Pulling a year together

You do not need a large garden to do this. A six-metre border can hold a willow at one end, a mixed berry hedge along the back, three or four clumps of knapweed and scabious in the middle, ivy on a fence panel, and a strip of long grass at the front left uncut until late summer. Add a nettle patch behind the shed and you have fed bees from February to November, birds from October to March, and given yourself something to cut, weave and arrange while the rest of the garden sleeps.