GARDEN SCHOOLS BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE LISTS
BIODIVERSITY includes all the process and practices that you can do to encourage a variety of different life forms – the more life forms, the greater the biodiversity and the healthier the environment.
Processes involve planting a range of different types of flowering plants, providing hospitable environments e.g. bug hotels, compost and ponds to practices like providing wild bird food and water, not using pesticides, keeping a “wild” corner, creating a rock garden, keeping a dead wood pile.
1. Attract birds to your garden (food and shelter)
2. Add a butterfly garden (flowers for nectar, caterpillar feeding plants)
3. Add a pollinator garden (bees)
4. Add water to your garden
5. Add a log, build a rock pile or preserve a snag
6. Add a birdhouse, bat house or native pollinator house
7. Add more native plants to your garden
8. Limit the use of pesticides and avoid preventative spraying
CLIMATE CHANGE
1. Be Chemical-Free – don’t use artificial fertilisers and pesticides – use compost and natural control methods.
2. Improve your soil – mulch and compost.
3. Reduce water consumption: mulching, installing rain barrels, adjusting your watering schedule, and using drip irrigation.
4. Compost kitchen and garden waste. Composting this waste can significantly reduce your contribution to carbon pollution,
5. Plant trees – trees absorb and store carbon.
6. Plastic free garden. Plastic generates greenhouse gases in production and is also a danger to wildlife.
7. If starting out and you don’t have your own made compost use peat free compost.
8. Have an area of wildlife garden
USEFUL LINKS
https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/conservation-biodiversity/wildlife/encourage-wildlife-to-your-garden
https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/gardening-in-a-changing-world/climate-change