The Wildlife Gardening Forum’s ‘How-to’ guides summarise current science and good practice to give you simple but authoritative advice on how to achieve the best results for wildlife in your garden.

 

We have grouped our guides into these categories:

 

How to: Adapt your garden to be better for all wildlife

 

How to: Ways to help different wildlife groups

 

How to: Use plants to support wildlife

 

How to: Create special garden habitats

 

How to: Garden sustainably

 

How to: Garden with other people

 

How to: Tips for yourself

 

The information pages are in the form of pdf files you can download and print.  The advice is for gardens in Britain and Ireland, and may not hold true for elsewhere in the world.

 

 

We plan to create more than fifty guides, and these will appear on this site as they are produced

 

 

By far the best book on practical projects in the wildllife garden is:  Gardening for Wildlife by Adrian Thomas, (2nd edition) 2017 Bloomsbury Press

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Garden Science
  • Introduction to Garden Science
  • Garden Ecology
    • Introduction to Garden Ecology
    • Gardens as a resource
    • Physical environment
    • Foodwebs and feeding roles
    • Climate change
    • Sheffield BUGS project
    • Plants for Bugs Project
    • Research needs
    • Garden surveys
    • Garden soils
  • Garden Biodiversity
    • Introduction to Garden Biodiversity
    • How many species in gardens?
    • Native and non-native issues
    • Gardens and conservation
  • History of gardens and wildlife
  • Finding out more
    • Introduction to Finding out more
    • Natural England booklets
    • Books and websites
    • Specialist societies
    • Scientific literature
    • Facebook groups
  • Wildlife Gardening Myths
• Wildlife
• Wild plants
• Advice - How to..
  • Introduction
  • "How to" guides
    • Introduction
    • Adapt your garden
    • Help wildlife groups
    • Work with plants
    • Make habitats
    • Garden sustainability
    • Garden with others
    • Tips for yourself
  • Garden Habitats
    • Introduction to garden habitats
    • Water habitats
      • Water and pond ecology
      • Ponds and conservation
      • Creating garden ponds
      • Planting-up ponds
      • Managing ponds
    • Hugelkultur
  • Plants and planting
    • Planting: basic principles
    • Native or non-native?
    • Planting for structure
    • Planting for pollinators
    • Planting for herbivores
    • Plants to avoid
    • Companion planting
  • Garden management
    • Introduction
    • Garden design
    • Compost and fertility
    • Managing pests and diseases
    • Gardening without peat
    • Garden products
    • Tidiness and wildlife
• Public Benefits
  • Introduction
  • Gardens and people
    • Introduction
    • Attitude Survey 2020
    • Wildlife gardens and Education 
      • Introduction
      • Education resources
      • Education evidence
      • Case studies
      • School grounds
      • Forest School
  • Urban gardens
    • Introduction
  • Garden businesses
    • Introduction 
    • Business grounds
      • Saïd School
      • Cemex factory