What you can do at home to help wildlife
This is the last stop on the Forster Memorial Park Tree Trail. We hope you enjoyed it and learnt something new. We thought we would finish the trail by giving you some tips on what you could do at home to help nature.
Your back- and front gardens, balcony, trees on your street, local park, or green space host an amazing variety of wildlife and that should be celebrated and encouraged. Consider these simple things that you can do to encourage and support wildlife:
- build a small pond to benefit amphibians, invertebrates and other wildlife – advice available from The Wildlife Trusts
- create a log pile to benefit Stag Beetles, toads, hedgehogs and other wildlife using suitable untreated broadleaf dead wood, place in shade or dappled shade buried, or in contact with the soil – advice available from The Wildlife Trusts
- build a bee/bug hotel to benefit insects and other invertebrates – advice available from The Woodland Trust
- don’t be too tidy – create wild areas to support hedgehogs and mini-beasts like caterpillars, spiders and beetles
- buy or build a bird nest box for your garden – advice available from British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)
- provide food for birds all year round but especially in the spring during breeding season – advice available from the BTO
- do not pave over your existing garden
- tart or continue wildlife gardening including in front gardens which are often under-used,- using native and/or wildlife friendly plants – those with simple flowers and night scented varieties are especially useful.
- compost food and garden waste – advice available from the Lewisham Council webpage
- avoid using pesticides, slug pellets and herbicides and try to work with nature or use alternative natural systems instead (e.g. planting annuals such as Californian poppies and marigolds in your garden will attract a wealth of beneficial insects, like ladybirds and hoverflies, that will eat aphids) – advice available from The Wildlife Trusts
- report ill or dead animals via the Garden Wildlife Health project
- participate in conservation volunteering activities (e.g. Nature’s Gym, Rivers and People), Citizen Science projects (e.g. River fly Monitoring, Butterfly count, Big Garden Birdwatch and other citizen surveys) and tell GiGL what species you saw in London
If you would like to hear more about the project or Forster Memorial Park, please contact the Friends of Forster Memorial Park and/or consider becoming a member.
This trail was created as part of the Ancient Woodland Restoration project delivered by Lewisham Council in partnership with the Friends of Forster Memorial Park in 2023-24. The aim of the project was to improve the park both for biodiversity and the local community.
The project was part of the second round of the Rewild London Fund supported by the Mayor of London, in partnership with the London Wildlife Trust.
