The Wildlife Gardens at Webb's Barn Cottage

Managing your garden for wildlife adds an extra dimension for the enthusiastic gardener (or even the less enthusiastic gardener!) It is an exciting way of gardening and can help our native wildlife by providing food and habitat that may be in short supply in the wild. Even a small garden can be managed in such a way that birds and mammals become a part of the fabric of the garden, rather than occasional visitors.

Although my 2 acre garden at Webb’s Barn Cottage is little more than 8 years old it has attracted an enormous range of insects, amphibians, birds and mammals. This can only happen if you know how to manage the garden to attract wildlife, and equally important, which plants to use.

The garden was formerly a part of a large commercial orchard, and the whole area, which includes cottage gardens, 2 demonstration wildlife gardens (one low maintenance), meadows, vegetable gardens and an orchard, is managed to be wildlife friendly. We try to 'garden with nature’ making use of our very dry sandy soil. We have wildlife ponds, nectar borders attracting 24 species of butterfly (22 now breed here, including the beautiful marbled white), homes for bumblebees, hedgehogs, beetles and anything else that cares to come along. No pesticides have been used in the garden since its planning began, and it is very productive. All our vegetables and fruit are grown here, and we make good use of all the beneficial insects we have attracted.

If you would like to see this garden for yourself, or find out more about how to get started with wildlife gardening, see the next few pages of the website.

Birds are an important part of the garden too, and over 50  species have visited the garden. We have many successful nests every year, including song thrushes, who effectively deal with all our snails!

This is no rural idyll. We have many busy roads in the Oxfordshire countryside around us, but the garden has become an oasis in the midst of 21st century life. Gardener's World, How Does Your Garden Grow, even items for the BBC news have all been filmed here, and many magazine articles have been written about this unusual garden.