Gardens 4 Wildlife Program

If you, like me, want to encourage more birds in your garden, and other wildlife, then looking into the Gardens 4 Wildlife Program is so worthwhile. If there isn’t one in your region, perhaps reach out to your local council or shire, to see if they would look at introducing it.

I’m involved in the Shire of Yarra Ranges and Victoria has programs in a few regions so hopefully the same in other states and in other countries too.

Planting suitable bushes, ground covers and trees, particularly native and indigenous, go a long way to encouraging various species to visit your garden, be it a small garden or a larger one, like my own. I wish I’d learnt 15 years ago what I know now, because my suburban garden would have been quite different – although it was progressing towards that goal when we left it 10 years ago. We certainly did see an increase in bird life, especially after we put in a fish pond.

Likewise, here we have a small fish pond close to the house, but a large billabong (around 20,000 litres in size) in the paddock away from the house, and this has been good for all the local bird life, but also for water skinks and other lizards, different frog species (three new species moved in when we added the billabong in 2017), and we’ve had wallabies and kangaroos visit when water was scarce during a hot dry summer period. We also have lots of dragonflies, a variety of bees, hoverflies and other insects.  Prior to us adding the billabong, we still had bird baths and lots of plant life to encourage the native bird life to visit our garden and be fed naturally.

But it’s not just the plants, bushes and trees you put in that the native birds need, it’s also what you would consider to be weeds. Dandelion flower heads, grass seed heads and other things are part of the diet of our local birds. And allowing some of your vegetables go to seed is great for pollinators, so necessary for our gardens.