pee and paper. Ps bin it, you could be saving a turtle or a whale every time and your children from finding something you wish they hadn’t when paddling. Keep loo cleaner use to just what is needed and use low impact brands that down quickly to harmless products. Use natural air fresheners such as scented leafed plants and essential oils. and elbow grease for hygiene, but don’t have it constantly going down the drain. Never flush cotton wool buds, wet wipes or sanitary products, these should all go in the bin. Cleaning Cheap, effective cleaning Washing soda – cheap environmentally friendly and multi-purpose e.g. cleans the oven, removes tea stains, water softener is amazing. It cleans things you thought were beyond hope! Seems expensive but you use the tiniest amount. Elbow grease – it works wonders! How will you spend the money you’ve saved on all those chemicals? “Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.” - Encourage wildlife by creating new spaces for nature to thrive outdoor area We have almost no outside space A vertical garden? It can be as simple as using an old pallet and fixing it against the wall (either fix some lining material to the base or rest it on the ground or on a row of bricks) stuff it with soil and peat free compost and poke seeds and cuttings into all the holes (you can dip the cuttings into rooting powder first to give them extra help). For some other ideas see . Even if you only have a wall you could put up nest boxes or construct a bug hotel (see below). Clearing your outside space of every last living thing or covering with non-permeable surfaces. This does no good to wildlife and nothing for surface water run-off to prevent flooding. More about the role of planting and flooding .
in contact with the soil and that should protect the worms. Harmless hoverflies are often mistaken for wasps and killed. Do you notice bugs that look like wasps but spend all their time hovering around flowers? These are hoverflies and they are one of our best friends in the garden as they eat aphids and other small pests. They usually start out as wriggly things in water and then turn into the wasp or bee mimics we see. They can’t sting at all but they want predators to think they can. They need open faced flowers with really short tubes to the nectar. Find out more Killing these hoverflies through using insecticides on your flowers will just make your garden safer for fast breeding pests and will also kill ladybirds and lacewings. Did you know hedgehogs were roaming the earth long before humans? hedgehogs Hedgehogs are disappearing as fast as tigers! There is not one cause for this but we can help. They need big areas to look for food, at least the size of a football pitch, and one of the reasons for their decline is not being able to get from garden to garden so when building a fence make certain it has spaces for hedgehogs to get through. Also they need safe places to sleep, have their babies and hibernate. Learn more . Hedgehogs are insect eaters, although they appreciate cat biscuits or dog food left out for them. Again, an over-tidy garden, every corner strimmed and mown, with immaculate fencing and pesticides is the worst for hedgehogs. Another big danger is power garden tools particularly strimmers so think hedgehog if using one. bats Bats get a bad press - horror films etc. They will never get stuck in your Bats are used to living close to humans and have shared our buildings for many years. However modern houses are built without the nooks and crannies of older buildings (and without the drafts) so it’s harder for them to make a home. Roost boxes can also be put up on walls and in trees. A single bat can eat 3,000 insects in a night and they can live for 40 years. If you have a If you are putting up a new building incorporate special bat bricks which give bats a home without actually letting them into the loft space. Bats have legal protection. If you have bats ask the Bat Conservation Trust or your council’s biodiversity officer for advice before doing anything that may disturb them in any way.