Taexalia

wild.life

Pruning For Wildlife

Red Admiral Butterfly

One of the most common suggestions for attracting wildlife to the garden is "plant a Buddleia". If you are like me, you may just need to let nature take its course - two of my Buddleia bushes arrived as seeds on the breeze, but they are easily found in most garden centres.

Different beasties like different colours, so choose according to whom you wish to attract. Bees like darker blues and purples and butterflies prefer pink and lilac forms.

Buddleia are easy to care for and seem to be tolerant of most things, including neglect but they do flower on new growth, so a good pruning during Winter/Early Spring will do the nectar hunters a favour later on. That's what I've been doing today and, in the spirit of trying to recycle everything, I have turned most of my cuttings into wildlife habitat bundles. All you need is some sisal string and, once you have cut the prunings into roughly equal lengths, tie them up loosely.

I made two bundles, one with the foliage left on and one with the foliage stripped. You can build fancy habitat towers using old pallets and having several different habitats "under one roof", or you can dot them around the garden in sheltered spots like I did.

Prunings for wildlife habitat