Gardens should be browner to encourage more wildlife

According to Gardeners’ World’s Richard Jones, writing in his blog, wildlife is being erased in new housing developments as landscape architects who smother remaining parts of well-drained soil with a mown lawn are desecrating the natural habitat of certain wildlife.

Mr Jones added that it is difficult to get the message across to gardeners that tidy, well-groomed low-maintenance gardens are “not wildlife-friendly at all”.

Speaking of the new neat housing developments, he continued: “And we, presumably, aspire to live in them. Notice how green it all is. Not brown. Green. But this is a wildlife desert. The wild life has been erased.”

Earlier this week, gardening expert Diarmuid Gavin, writing in his blog for the Daily Mirror, said planting shrubs such as the spindle tree and the guelder rose help provide great sustenance to birds and other wildlife during the winter