Team Wilder wildlife garden 2024 Dorothy in Knowle Bristol

Name: Dorothy Smith
Category: Individual garden
Area: Knowle, Bristol

Dorothy smith was a wildlife gardening competition WINNER 2024!

Tell us what you or your group love about your garden 
Dorothy: I'm just amazed at and very grateful for the variety of wildlife that I see in my small suburban garden. Having never had a garden of my own before, I've found that creating a place where birds, hedgehogs, slow worms, frogs, foxes, squirrels, bees and many other invertebrates feel safe and welcome is the most fulfilling and life-affirming thing. Making my garden into a green and colourful escape from the city and somewhere for my young kids to have fun makes me happy too, but the wild visitors are the real priority.

What makes your garden wildlife friendly?
Dorothy: There are gaps in the fences so that hedgehogs can come and go, three hedgehog houses built from bricks and wood in shady spots and a hedgehog feeding station with fresh food and water each night. I created a raised barrel pond and rockery last year, and we have a couple of bird feeders and bird baths, and a bird nesting box on the side of the house.

There are some log piles to attract invertebrates, lots of pollinator-friendly plants (eg honeysuckle, foxgloves, lavender, purple toadflax, cirsium, alliums, sunflowers), a grassy area that I leave unmown which is full of clover, dandelions and buttercups and a bee/bug hotel. I've left an old dustbin lid and patio slab in sunny areas as places for slow worms to warm themselves.

When we moved here in 2021 the garden was just an empty lawn and one crab apple tree, so I've planted more trees and hedges over the past year which will eventually thicken out and provide more cover for birds and other animals.

What wildlife have you seen in your garden?
There's a steady flow of hedgehog visitors who stay in our hedgehog houses and feed at the feeding stations. We get foxes visiting the garden in the early hours and recently there's been a mum and two cubs that show up most nights and try to squeeze into the boxes to pinch the hedgehogs' food!

Slow worms live in the compost bin and under old patio slabs (I counted 10 together under one slab last summer). Bees, butterflies, moths and other pollinators. Flocks of young starlings emptying the bird feeder daily and splashing around in the bird bath, sparrows, goldfinches, blackbirds, crows, great tits, a sparrow hawk, frogs (but no spawn yet in my pond), squirrels hoovering up underneath the bird feeders and mice pinching sunflower seeds from the greenhouse.

Dorothy shared some advice about attracting wildlife in her garden:
Provide water! After watching the animals visiting my garden over the last few years (both day and night visitors), I've realised that the importance of leaving fresh water out for them can't be overstated... leaving dishes of clean water at ground level and in raised baths can really make a difference and it doesn't have to cost anything!

Leave areas of your lawn to grow wild. There are lots of little creatures that are desperate for somewhere to forage for food, drink clean water and sleep safely in an urban environment. If you build it, they will come. I think it's important to note that you don't have to let your garden go completely wild to make it into a wildlife friendly garden. You can have a garden that works for you and for the wildlife!

Attract slow worms by leaving out an old patio slab or look for them in the compost bin (I counted 10 together under one slab last summer).

Advice and comments from the Team Wilder Community Ecologist:
Dorothys garden is a wonder and you’d never know that it was only a few years in the making. As a mum of two young ones she balances a functional family garden with a bounty of habitat features, and wildlife clearly informs her entire planting regime.

There are lots of inventive ways that Dorothy cares for wildlife here, with 3 hedgehog homes and not one but 2 feeding stations! What’s more, her ambitions for a ‘hog highway has lead to neighbourly collaboration that shows she is thinking about wildlife at a neighbourhood scale.

The incorporation of her paved driveway is a creative feat we can’t wait to see realised and its worth noting this garden may have been the most colourful we visited. My only recommendation is to move the feeding stations to different ends of the garden to discourage hedgehog tussles over food.