Gardens can play an important role in ecological connectivity

Connecting our gardens to the wider landscape can help support biodiversity and restore nature.
Image credit: Rachel Bailey

Private and public gardens are a large part of the Green infrastructure of a village, town and city. Considering how your garden connects to other green spaces is paramount to helping wildlife move throughout the built environment in which we live allowing species to thrive.

Our built environment as well as the agricultural landscape has reduced the area of natural habitat for wildlife as well as separated these patches from each other.

Wildlife need to move and reproduce with other populations of the same species to prevent inbreeding. Many also need to move at different times of the day into one type of habitat for sleeping and another for foraging. Similarly, different habitat types are often needed at different stages of their lifecycle.  So, buildings, roads and other landscape features and monocultures of agricultural fields in the countryside can literally stop plants, earthworms, bees, small mammals, and even birds in their tracks.

The smaller patches are also subject to much change in environmental conditions on a daily basis meaning the patches of habitat are not suitable for species that require specific conditions.

So what can we do?

Put simply - we can connect our gardens, parks and other green spaces to each other. By doing so, the smaller, disparate patches of vegetation and habitats can be connected - whether continuously or in the form of regular stepping stones - allowing wildlife to move through the landscape.

Three ways in how to connect our gardens & support wildlife?

1. Connect to Landscape Networks

   • Look at your local area - by walking around it and through a desk study, look at the type of habitats that are represented within the local area - and do more of the same - create quality habitats and create a network of habitats across your local landscape.

2. Between garden connectivity

   • Retain and add to existing shrubs and trees on boundaries to connect with neighbour’s shrubs on their boundaries. This will increase the area of the shrubs, creating a protected corridor between the two gardens as well as offer shelter from artificial light at night, disturbance from garden users (including predators, eg cats) and places to feed and nest.

   • Create permeable boundaries - hedges are brilliant for this and offer a habitat in their own right. They also allow ease of movement in relative safety along its length. Alternatively, an open trellis or fencing can let small mammals and other vertebrates and invertebrates cross boundaries.

   • Incorporate structural complexity (trees, shrubs and layering our planting) to connect with nearby woodland, included hedges and open grasslands with different heights of vegetation - so some cut grass replicating grazing by herbivores, slightly longer vegetation around 30 cm and then taller vegetation.

   • Include water bodies that can connect to other ponds, streams, lakes and rivers. And don’t forget a damp bog planting area and make both as large as practically possible.

3. Within garden connectivity

   • Consider how different parts of the garden are connected to one another to allow ease of movement through the space without exposing themselves to predators or perhaps sunlight (if they prefer damp, darker conditions).

Supporting rare species with connectivity
As part of our work at Rachel Bailey Garden Design, we also investigate whether there are particular known populations of rare species that the garden we are working on could be suitable for. If so, we will develop the site in favour of these species. You could do this too.

Gardens can be part of the solution to help restore nature
Considering connectivity at all stages of the design process and at different scales - from the garden scale to how this garden connects to the wider landscape - at the street, neighbourhood, town/city and possibly wider scale - will help improve the biodiversity of the area.

And finally, don’t forget that each and every garden, no matter how big or small, can make a difference in terms of biodiversity. We just need to think about where it fits in the grand scheme and gardens can be part of the solution to help restore nature.

Within garden connectivity; photo credit: Rachel Bailey