Over the past two days, we’ve looked at dropping harmful chemicals that drive fauna out of your garden. Now that you’ve started down that important road, it’s time to look at how to encourage beneficial insects, birds, mammals and amphibians into your plot.

Why bother feeding the birds and the bees? The simple answer would be that a long time ago, the person who built your house nicked theirs by destroying their natural habitat and building on their food source. So by gardening in a wildlife-friendly manner, you’re giving back what rightfully belongs to bumblebees and wild birds. It’s essential that gardens everywhere cater for wildlife. You might argue that this is even more pressing in towns where each garden is part of a corridor for wildlife. Don’t be the garden that blocks that corridor.

Some gardeners like to argue that all gardens just are good for wildlife. But even if you’re polishing your organic halo after discarding chemicals, you might not be doing a great job at feeding the wildlife on your doorstep. Many popular garden flowers are so overbred that they provide very little – if anything – in the way of food for bees and birds, and poor planning can mean food is not available in the bleak months when creatures need it the most.

So we’ll be looking at the best plants to keep the wildlife around you fat and happy. This post will involve lots of long lists, but it will also involve a suggested year-round planting scheme for each group of creatures that we cover, to ensure that food is available for as long as they need.

Bees

Bees need access to food all year around. Their main feeding time is between March and October, but they often come out of hibernation outside those months on unusually mild days, and if there is no nectar or pollen around, they can die.

There are hundreds of different species of bee which fall into three main groups: bumblebees, honeybees and solitary bees. Some species of bumblebee are already extinct.

You can of course increase the number of bees around you by becoming a beekeeper. As this course is focusing on gardening rather than other hobbies, we will not go into detail on this, but the British Beekeepers Association has further resources.

There are a number of planting practices you can stick to which will help bees:

1. Don’t use pesticides.
2. Plant large clumps of bee-friendly flowers in the sunniest parts of the garden.
3. Don’t fill your garden with double flowers or exotic flowers as these hold little value to hungry bees.
4. Different species of bees have tongues that are different lengths, and so need different-shaped flowers to be able to feed effectively. Plant a mixture of deep flowers like foxglove and honeysuckle and shallow flowers like hellebores to ensure all species have enough.

Here is a list of plants which hold particularly good food resources for bees (botanical names are used to avoid confusion):

Aconitum, Agastache, Ajuga, Alcea, Allium, Alyssum, Anchusa, Anemone, Anthyllis, Aquilegia, Armeria, Aster, Aubretia, Borago, CallunaCampanula, Ceanothus, Centaurea, Clarkia, Cosmos, Cotoneaster, Crocus, Cyanara cardunculus, Cytisus, Digitalis, Dipsacus, Doronicum, Echinops, Echium, Eranthis, Erigeron, Eryngium, Erysimum, Eschscholzia, Foeniculum, Galanthus, Geranium, Geum, Gypsophila, Helenium, Helianthus, Heliotropium, Helleborus, Hyacinthoides, Hyssopus, Iberis, Laburnum, Lamium, Lavandula, Liatris, Limnanthes, Lonicera, Lotus coniculatus, Lunaria, Lupinus, Lychnis, Malus, Mentha, Monarda, Myosotis, Nepeta, Nigella, Papaver orientalis, Penstemon, Polemonium, Prunus, Pulmonaria, Ribes, Rhinanthus minor, Rhododendron, Rosmarinus, Rubus fruticosus, Rudbeckia, Salvia, Sarcococca, Scabiosa, Sedum, Sidalcea, Silene, Solidago, Stachys, Symphytum, Thymus, Trifolium, Verbena, Veronica, Viburnum, Viola, Wisteria, Zinnia.

Year-round bee food plan

January: Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)
February:  Snowdrops (Galanthus sp.)
March: Lungwort (Pulmonaria sp.)
April: Flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum)
May:  Alliums (Allium sp.)
June: Honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum)
July: Mexican giant hyssop (Agastache mexicana)
August: Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
September: Sunflower (Helianthus annus)
October: Michaelmas daisy (Aster pyrenaeus)
November: Viburnum (Viburnum tinus)
December: Mahonia (Mahonia japonica)

Write up your own year-round bee food planting plan for your garden, or steal ours.

Birds

Birds are another group that suffer when there is insufficient food available out of season. Some species will happily feast on berries all year round, while others will need you to put food and water out for them regularly during the sparse, cold winter months.

You’ll need to put out a range of seeds and fatty foods during the winter to keep different birds happy. Try to aim to have a combination of these available throughout the year but particularly during the winter months:

Niger seed (for finches), peanuts (avoid these during the nesting months as some baby birds can choke on them), balls of fat and sunflower seed.

How to make fat balls

Ingredients:
250g lard
Mixed seed and nuts
Unsmoked bacon rind (raw)

1. Melt the lard down and then allow to cool so it becomes a little thicker and gelatinous.

2. Pour the seeds and rind in and stir well.

3. You can form the mixture into a ball once it has cooled sufficiently and hang from branches or bird tables. Or pour the mixture into an empty juice or milk carton (the tetrapak sort) and allow to soldify. Once solid, cut long windows along each side of the carton, thread some strong string through holes bored in the top of the carton, and hang from a branch.

Feeding the birds from your garden

The plants listed here will attract a range of birds to your garden. Below is a year-round food plan with a mixture of seeds, berries and fruits.

Allium, Alnus, Aronia, Berberis, Callicarpa, Chaenomeles, Clematis vitalba, Cornus, Cotoneaster, Crataegus, Cypress, Dipsacus, Echinops, Euonymus europaeus, Hedera, Helianthus, Ilex, Lavandula, Lonicera, Mahonia, Malus, Pinus, Primula, Prunus, Pyracantha, Rosa rugosa, Sambucus, Sedum, Sorbus, Taxus, Viburnum opulus, Viscum album, Vitis.

Year-round bird food plan

January: Pyracantha (Pyracantha coccinea)
February: Ivy (Hedera helix)
March: Teasel seedheads (Dipsacus fullonum)
April:  Sunflower seedheads (Helianthus annus)
May: Primula (some birds enjoy the seeds)
June: Cherries (Prunus serotina)
July:  Honeysuckle berries (Lonicera periclymenum)
August: Lavender – for goldfinches especially (Lavandula angustifolia)
September: Elder (Sambucus nigra)
October: Rosa rugosa
November: Viburnum opulus
December: Cotoneaster

Write up a plan for your garden that involves winter berries and seedheads, as well as a year-round supply of seeds, fat balls and nuts.

Butterflies

To attract butterflies into your garden, you need to provide food for their caterpillars as well as the adults. For some species, this means providing decoy crops away from your vegetables to ensure that both you and your butterflies get the food you want.

Here are some key plants for caterpillars with the names of the butterfly indicated in brackets:

Bird’s-foot trefoil (common blue), nasturtium (cabbage white), holly (holly blue), alder buckthorn (brimstone), sorrell (small copper), stinging nettles (peacock, red admiral, comma, painted lady, small tortoiseshell), garlic mustard (orange tip), ragwort (swallowtail) dog violets (fritillaries).

Here are some plants for butterflies:

Alyssum, Aster, Aubretia, Buddleia, Centaurea, Centranthus ruber, Cheiranthus, Echinacea, Echinops, Erysimum, Escallonia, Galeopsis, Geranium, Hebe, Helianthus, Hesperis matronalis, Hyacinthus, Hydrangea, Iberis, Lavandula, Leucanthemum, Ligustrum, Lobelia, Lonicera, Lotus corniculatus, Lunaria, Lythrum, Marjoram, Myosotis, Muscari, Nepeta, Phlox, Scabiosa, Sedum, Taraxacum, Thymus, Trifolium, Verbena.

Moths

Moths also need food for larvae and adult, and a specific range of plants that open at dusk and nightfall is needed in particular. They can be important pollinators in the garden.

Host foods for moth larvae do unfortunately include many edibles such as peas and fruiting trees. It’s up to you to net the plants you want to eat and leave others for the caterpillars.

Flowers that attract moths include:

Buddleia, Centranthus, Erica, Hesperis, Lonicera, Lychnis, Nicotiana, Oenothera, Silene.

Hoverflies

We’ve already seen what a useful role hoverflies play in controlling pests in the organic garden. So we need to entice them into our plots as much as we possibly can.

Here’s a list of flowers that attract hoverflies:

Alyssum, Aster, Coriandrum, Foeniculum, Hedera, Iberis, Limnanthes, Papaver, Petroselinum, Phacelia, Sedum.

Incorporate one plant from each of the lists for butterflies, moths and hoverflies into your garden.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow we’ll be showing you how to create habitats for wildlife to live, breed, hibernate and shelter in around your garden. Don’t forget to subscribe to our better gardener emails so the course is delivered straight to your inbox at 2pm tomorrow.