1/ How to get a more natural garden
"There's a mistaken belief that wildlife gardening is something special, something different, something odd and that a wildlife garden needs to be untidy, messy and not something you'd be proud of, but that's not true," Dr Thompson said.
The best gardens for wildlife needn't cost lots of money, and many of the "wildlife" products sold in garden centres are unnecessary, he said.
"Don't be too tidy: don't be in a hurry to clear up everything when the garden stops flowering. Just leave a bit of stuff lying around.
"Decking is a disaster. One of the findings of the Sheffield study was the very clear relationship between hard surfaces of any sort and less wildlife. It doesn't matter what it is – as long as it's hard, it's bad," he added.
*Plant large shrubs and let them grow big. Shrubs and trees produce more vegetation where wildlife can live and eat.
*Allow at least some flowers to turn to seed and the lawn to grow tall. Don't be in a hurry to clear up fallen leaves.
*Don't illuminate your garden at night with bright lights. This will disturb many nocturnal creatures, such as moths.
*Create a compost heap – they are miniature nature reserves in themselves. Compost also enriches the soil.
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2/ Dandelions are demonised as one of the most pernicious weeds, but hold back on the mowing and you’ll find a whole range of garden wildlife depends on them for food, writes Kate Bradbury of The Guardian
A few weeks ago I walked past a lawn which hadn’t yet had its first spring cut. It was awash with bright yellow dandelions, and each one was peppered with several pollen beetles, perhaps enjoying their first meal of the year. A week later the dandelions were buzzing with bees, but a few days after that, this little patch of wildflowers had been razed – what happened to the pollen beetles and the bees?
As I write, thousands of hectares of such wildflower habitat are being destroyed under the blades of our lawn mowers, and the bees, pollen beetles, butterflies and moths are going hungry. As a weed, it’s one of the most unpopular of the bunch: dandelion tap roots are notoriously hard to dig out, the plants have an almost unrivaled knack of propagating themselves, including in walls and cracks in paving where nothing else would live, and – to add insult to injury – they are often the first flower we see in spring and the last in autumn. The dandelion is bold and brash and unrelenting. But that is why it is brilliant. It’s virtually everywhere and nearly always in flower; it’s the pollinator’s best friend,
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3/ For peat's sake
It's a valuable and vulnerable natural resource, so why are we digging it up? Monty calls for a total boycott on peat compost
I urge you not to buy any peat products for the garden. Look for alternative potting composts. Make your own. Every time you use a peat-based compost in the garden, you are deliberately participating in the destruction of a non-renewable environment that sustains some of our most beautiful plant and animal life. No garden on this earth is worth that. Monty Don
Sun 17 Mar 2002 11.38 GMT First published on Sun 17 Mar 2002 11.38 GMT
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4/ Drivers who needlessly travel short distances expose themselves to harmful 'pollution bursts' in the first five minutes, report claims
• Emissions systems fitted in cars take around 5 minutes to activate
• Many journeys undertaken in urban areas are so short that half of the time spent in a car would be during these periods of high pollution levels
• Campaigners have called for motorists to cover short journeys without their car
• Motorists are exposed to the highest level of harmful emissions at the start of every journey, research shows.
• Emissions systems that are built into cars to capture harmful pollution take around five minutes to warm up and activate, resulting in dangerous 'pollution bursts' in the initial moments drivers and their passengers are en route.
• And a new report claims that many Britons are needlessly exposing themselves to these higher toxicity levels to travel paltry distances that could easily be covered by other means.
By Rob Hull For Thisismoney.co.uk
Published: 07:55, 11 May 2018 | Updated: 11:06, 11 May 2018
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5/ Don’t use pesticide sprays
It’s well known that bees are in trouble and their exposure to pesticides isn’t helping. After all, pesti-cides are insecticides and are designed to kill insects – the clue’s in the name.
Pesticides include chemicals that kill insects (insecticides), plants (herbicides) and fungi/moulds (fungicides). They’re widely used in horticulture, in domestic gardens and household products, and to manage parks, housing estates, sports grounds, golf courses, pavements and roadsides.
Most of the widely used chemicals are broad spectrum, meaning they affect more than just the intended tar-get pest, disease or weed. If you’re a bee nesting or feeding near crops treated to control pests, like flea beetles, you’re likely to get a potentially harmful dose, like it or not. There’s also evidence of harm to soils and water, and the organisms that depend on them.
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