A garden pond, even a small one, is one of the most valuable additions for wildlife. Frogs and newts use it to breed, dragonflies and damselflies lay eggs in it, and birds and hedgehogs will drink and bathe at the edges given the chance.

Connectivity between gardens is often the missing piece. A small gap at the base of a fence, native hedging used in place of a solid boundary where practical, and less hard paving all help animals move between plots rather than being boxed into one. These small changes add up meaningfully over the course of a season.

Not every beneficial garden insect lives in a hive or a colony. Many UK bee species are solitary, nesting alone or in loose aggregations, and insects such as lacewings and ladybirds shelter individually or in small clusters, particularly over winter. An insect house gives these species something a tidy Garden Wildlife often lacks: safe, undisturbed nesting and overwintering space.

Leaving a few deliberately untidy corners does more good than a uniformly neat border. A patch of long grass, a stack of logs left to slowly rot down, and leaf litter left in place over winter all provide shelter for insects, amphibians and small mammals that a fully cleared garden simply cannot offer.

Garden birds face different pressures depending on the time of year, and supplementary feeding is most valuable during two periods in particular: the late winter to early spring hungry gap, when natural food is scarce, and the breeding season, when adults are feeding hungry chicks.

For gardeners wanting an alternative to chemical sprays, a soil-applied option is worth considering as a first step, and a good starting point is a range of slug nematodes for gardens suited to the pest in question.