Create a Rewilding zone

A simple way that you can create a Rewilding Zone in your garden is by taking a break from mowing your lawn and allowing wildflowers to grow naturally! 

By changing your mowing regime, your garden will become more and more flower-rich over the years! As your garden transforms into a colourful wildflower meadow, you will help to provide a healthy pitstop for all pollinators. Keeping a long-flowering meadow provides food and shelter for pollinators, while cutting grass less frequently provides food bursts for pollinators.

In long-flowering meadows, which are meadows that are cut just once a year, you can expect to see plants such as Oxeye Daisy, Vetches, Devils-Bit-Scabious and Knapweed. When cutting these annually, let the cuttings lie for a few days to allow any seeds to drop before collecting your seeds and removing the cuttings.

Grow pollinator-friendly plants!

There are many garden plants to choose from that are colourful, attractive, and can provide pollinators with the food they need. Incorporating some pollinator-friendly plants in window boxes, hanging baskets or other containers can be done in any garden, but it’s particularly useful for homes with little outdoor space. Ideally, you want to ensure there are no ‘hunger gaps or times when there is not enough nectar or pollen in bloom for our friends. During summer, there is usually plenty of flowers providing food for pollinators; however, in Spring and Autumn, it is equally important to have food for pollinators. By planting some of the following, you can ensure you have flowers blooming all year round. Please note the below are some suggestions and does not include all plants.  

• Annuals for window boxes: Sweet Alyssum, Poached Egg Plant
• Perennials for window boxes: Aubrieta, Bellflowers, Verbena
• Herbs for pots: Borage, Chives, Lavender, Rosemary, Sage, Thyme

Build an insect hotel

Build an insect hotel or create an area for mining Bees. There are many ways to develop nesting habitats for a small number of Irish solitary mining bees and Irish solitary cavity bees. Irish Solitary cavity bees prefer to nest in existing cavities. You could drill south or east-facing holes in wooden fencing for solitary bees to nest in. These holes should be 10cm deep and range from 4-8mm in diameter. Add them at the height of at least 1.5-2m, or you could build, purchase a bee hotel. Irish solitary mining bees like to burrow into the soil and create their nests. Scrape away some grass in flat, sunny spots in your garden to create areas for these bees to nest.