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URBAN WILDLIFE
GARDENING
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A Large Urban
Wild flower
Garden.
A
Small Urban Wild flower
Garden.
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A Large Urban
Wild flower
Garden.
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Design for a large urban Garden is
aimed at extending the leafy suburban landscape.
Parks and well planted housing
estates attract large quantities of wildlife where filled with native
plant species.
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Food and Music and Wildflowers
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My best urban garden advice is
to create gardens that act as gene banks for plant species from which you
can swap plants (Plant Genes) with your neighbours, might even know some lovely people. Grow some rare edible perennial Cabbages of the "cut and come again variety", or Perennial Onions. Plant Chives (a protected species
in Ireland) and wild herbs that can be grown in large tubs or bold groups.
There are great edible plants that also look ornamental: Wild (not garden centre) Thyme
and Marjoram.
Hedge
Garlic and Burdock
are all great herbal wild plants. Nettles and Horse Radish are great
ingredients in Irish made sushi. Use the garden and the food and the wildflowers and share a great meal your friends and invite the
neighbours, getting wild about now, swapping genes! That's wildlife
gardening, who wants to be mowing the lawn, let the guests trample it.! Grow onions instead.
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The wild flower fast food chain!
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Whole areas can be devoted to
wildlife or specific species such as wetland or ponds for frogs and
butterfly gardens, or to specific
species like Woundwort,
Fleabane
or Bluebell
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Where the gardener is prepared to
prune and clip for better flowering, they can grow any native tree or
shrub in large groupings that will feed wildlife. If space
allows, plant shrubs and allow to grow to their full un-pruned size and
shape and just compare a naturally grow specimen to a clipped one.
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If it's work you're
after then regular cutting of most plants in confined spaces encourages
more flowers. Try cutting our low growing species. Regular cutting encourages more
flowers on low growing beds of species
such as Kidney
Vetch, Trefoil and
Selfheal, the 'Daffodils'
of the wildflower world. Clip species as flowers
fade, especially nitrogen fixing species such as Clover, Kidney Vetch and
Trefoil.
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In the urban garden, wild flowers are best treated as collections of
species such as
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A
Small Urban Wild flower
Garden.
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You can change an entire small urban garden to a
wildlife garden starting at the back door as an interface between house
and garden. An urban garden filled with informally grown wildflowers works
well as its easy to maintain and will flower over a long period.
Fill a small garden with scented and edible wild herbs.
The small garden can provide cut flowers, fresh herbs and useful insect
repellents for the house. What comes into the
kitchen, can return to the garden as compost. Newspapers can also be used
to mulch with further reducing waste.
In small gardens it is best to decide on a
specific type of Wildlife to encourage. Sparrows
and Finches eat seeds and require cover from cats. Blue tits, Blackbird
and Summer visiting Warblers require shrub species that encourage caterpillars
and grubs. Plant Golden alder, Campion species and nectar rich
wildflowers such as Sedum species, Violas and Legumes.
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Wildlife is best attracted through the use of proprietary bird
feeds as small gardens generally do not have enough feeding value
throughout the year. Children can show off cooking fatty cakes for birds
and regular feeders make great subjects for the amateur photographer.
Most importantly choose plant species for your garden,
that attracts the wildlife that is common to your region, that are in the area you live in or the
street you live on.
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Field Scabious attracts
Butterflies and is easy from seed
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species is best for your garden is to grow them all.
Observe them
over the years, look and see what is attracted to the flower, what eats
the leaves and when the see head forms are here insects and grubs in
the seed head.
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Butterflies produce caterpillars and birds eat
them. Its the food chain!
Your wild flower garden will one day become part of the
urban
wildlife corridor
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"Dear Sandro, Are urban wildlife gardens
untidy?" "If you are a lazy gardener like me
then yes! and if you are like my mum, then an urban wildlife garden has got to be neat and
pretty.!"
"Sandro, how much would it cost me to sow an
urban wildlife garden?" "Around EURO 30.00 - a few packets of
seed. In the small urban wildlife
garden it is most suitable to grow and then re-collect tour own seeds".
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Design By Nature wildlife growers are actually protecting species
across the world, they buy our products so that they can take part
in global genetic conservation, we hope you would like to do the
same. You can visit our shop or the links of our competitors
who we believe are also setting world standards in wildlife
gardening.
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