Nurture your mini habitats

Don’t overlook the corners, cracks and crevices in your garden, writes Alice Whitehead – they provide valuable micro habitats for plants and wildlife.

Alternative text should describe the visual content of the image. — Plants such as ivy-leaved toadflax can colonise tiny cracks in garden walls

It can be easy for the larger elements of your garden – the trees, shrubs and manmade structures – to divert attention and become the focus. But how about looking at your growing space through a smaller lens, perhaps even the compound eyes of a beetle or a bee?

At this micro level, cavities in walls and gaps in paths become miniature worlds, all with their own diverse ecosystems. And they offer specific and sometimes unique environments for different species. Damp pockets might be home to fungi, ferns and beetles while more sun-baked spots are ideal for alpines, creeping herbs and hunting spiders.

The more habitats you can offer in your garden, the more diverse the wildlife you’ll attract. So think of your garden as a series of interconnected layers, with each tiny part playing an important role in the ecological community.

Ground-dwelling invertebrates, for example, such as spiders, beetles, millipedes and woodlice, can be easily overlooked but they make a larger contribution to garden biodiversity than any other group of ‘micro-fauna’. They help recycle plant waste, clear up pest insects – and an average garden could be home to 2,000 different species.

In our Every Garden Matters research paper we show that gardens can have a positive contribution to nature conservation. And with human use of land, habitat destruction and climate change causing a 13% decline in the abundance of wildlife in the UK, since 1970, small spaces become a big deal.

Creatures under your feet 🔗

At these overlooked edges, even cracks in paving stones can become tiny biospheres. In a recent study (1), up to 66 species of invertebrates were happily sharing pavement space with people. The researchers conducted surveys at 12 locations across Berlin and found urban pavements and cobbled streets fostered a surprising number and quantity of soil dwelling insects.

Up to 55 species of ground-nesting Hymenoptera (a large order of insects that includes sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants) were discovered hiding in the cracks and crevices, including 28 species of wild bees and 22 apoid wasps.

Similarly, in its Greener Cities guide, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK) celebrates resilient, native plants such as dandelions, herb Robert and chickweed that thrive in the harsh conditions of paths and kerbsides. They discovered more than 80 different species in just one street, making an important contribution to insect habitats.

So perhaps it’s time to consider your garden pathway as more than a way to get from A to B. Rather than pressure-wash so-called weeds, allow some of them to be colonised to benefit nature. Or deliberately fill gaps between slab corners with plants, such as thyme. Stones, logs and flowerpots will also attract centipedes, millipedes and woodlice. And as carnivorous hunters, centipedes keep populations of snails, spiders and soft-bodied grubs under control.

Wall to wall wildlife 🔗

Brick walls may be constructed as barriers and screens, but they also offer fortifications for flora and fauna. These linear nature reserves may have moist pockets on one side, and dry, warm habitats on the other – providing homes for insects, toads and small mammals.

The interstices between bricks can be naturally colonised by algae, mosses, lichens and ferns. But you can also mimic nature by planting up these micro habitats with tough succulents and sempervivums. Layer the top of your wall with pebbles and these can act as planting pits for rock cress (aubretia). Or consider a vertical rockery.

Beetles will find shelter in these protected environments, particularly in winter, and may lay their eggs in cracks in spring. And black garden ants will congregate in gaps. They help aerate soil, pollinate plants and dispose of caterpillars, as well as being part of the food chain for larger creatures.

So maximise this intricate map of flora-filled fissures and green gaps in your garden and you can support a much bigger ecological matrix, playing its part in climate mitigation by nurturing wildlife, absorbing heat and filtering rainwater.

Make a vertical rockery

Our head gardener Emma O’Neill shows you how to create an alpine rockery in a small space

Alpine gardens were a passion of our founder Lawrence Hills – so we wanted to find a way to create a smaller version in our organic demonstration garden.

We were lucky enough to have some stone slabs leftover from building work, so we smashed these into smaller pieces and added a good mix of gravel to the ground before burying the slabs vertically, close together.

The aim was to create a ‘crevice garden’, which mimics rocky, mountainous terrain. This creates narrow planting pockets for alpines, as well as space for planting around the base.
It’s best to avoid an area with lots of shade as alpines don’t like damp soil. As the name suggests, these plants thrive in high-altitude, mountainous regions so require well-drained soil, and an exposed sunny site with lots of air circulation.

Plants to choose
• Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vulgaris). With beautiful flowers and feathery hair foliage, this long-lived alpine is an absolute favourite of mine.
• Creeping thyme (Thymus praecox). A scented evergreen that grows happily in sunny crevices.
• Bellflower (Campanula portenschlagiana). Unlike most alpines, this flowers all summer long.
• Saxifrage This pretty evergreen perennial is smothered in flowers from April until June.

References 🔗

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383457035_Urban_pavements_as_a_novel_habitat_for_wild_bees_and_other_ground-nesting_insects