Helping wildlife adapt to climate change: connected gardens

Wildlife in gardens is not fixed in place. As the climate warms, the conditions each species can live in move across the map, often polewards and uphill. Animals and plants need to follow those conditions or their populations can decline. A garden can help by providing food, water, shelter and a route to the next green space.

Gardens matter because their combined area is large. In the UK, garden spaces support over half of the nation’s butterfly, amphibian and reptile species and more than forty per cent of its birds and mammals, according to the Royal Horticultural Society. They also cover three times as much land as all the country’s National Nature Reserves combined. For the wider climate context, see gardening in a changing climate.

Why wildlife has to move

A species lives within a range of conditions, and warming shifts that range across the ground. Many animals and plants are already moving polewards and to higher, cooler ground. A population that cannot move fast enough, or that runs out of suitable ground, comes under pressure.

Warming also changes the timing of the seasons. Spring arrives earlier, but not by the same amount for every species. A caterpillar may hatch before or after the birds that feed it to their chicks, or a pollinator may emerge when fewer of its usual flowers are open. A garden that flowers across a long season gives wildlife more chances to find food.

Connect gardens to other habitat

Wildlife moving across a landscape needs connected habitat, not isolated islands. A single rich garden surrounded by paving and solid fences may be hard for many animals to reach or leave. A chain of gardens, linked to hedges, parks, verges and green spaces, gives wildlife a route through the wider landscape.

Gardeners create that connection together. A hedge instead of a solid fence, a gap at the bottom of a fence, or a line of trees and nectar plants can link one green space to the next. A whole street of connected gardens supports more wildlife than the same gardens fenced off from one another.

Provide food, water and shelter

A useful garden gives wildlife food, water, shelter and somewhere to breed. A diverse planting with a long succession of flowering provides nectar and pollen from the first bulbs of late winter to the last flowers of autumn, with seeds and berries beyond. Native plants support the widest range of insects, and nectar-rich plants such as buddleja and honeysuckle, hedgerow shrubs such as hawthorn, and cottage flowers such as foxglove and borage all feed pollinators through the season.

Water matters more as summers grow hotter and drier. A pond is one of the best single additions for wildlife, and even a shallow dish topped up in a drought gives birds and insects somewhere to drink. Hedges, trees, long grass and a pile of dead wood or leaves in a quiet corner provide shelter, nesting places and overwintering sites. Use fewer pesticides so the insects that feed birds, hedgehogs and beetles remain available.

Small gardens can work together

A typical UK garden was found to hold around two and a half thousand species of plant and animal, and there are millions of gardens. Each garden that plants for a long flowering season, holds a little water, keeps some shelter and links to its neighbours adds to the habitat around it. Wildlife gains most when those small changes connect across many gardens.