Backyard bioblitz – how to make a great garden for wildlife
Issued: 26 Aug 6 minutes read

Create layers for habitat

Animals love a garden with a bit of depth – literally. In the wild, animals rely on all sorts of different layers for shelter, food, and nesting spots. You can recreate this in your backyard by mixing up the plant heights and structures.

Start at ground level with things like native grasses, groundcovers, leaf litter, and mulch. These cosy spots are perfect for lizards, insects, and frogs to hide out. Strappy plants like mat rushes (Lomandra spp.), flax lilies (Dianella spp.) and ground ferns make great habitat hangouts – and they look good, too.

Next, add in some shrubs and mid-sized plants. These provide safe places for small birds to shelter and build nests – plus, they’re great for bees and butterflies too.

Finally, go tall with a few native trees if you’ve got the space. They’ll attract birds like lorikeets, honeyeaters and kookaburras, and can offer homes for possums and gliders (especially if you pop in a nesting box).

Chuck in a couple of logs, rocks, or even an old tree stump and you’ve just made your garden 100% more interesting – for you and the wildlife. Small, open sunlit areas can be great for reptiles and insects to warm up in cooler weather.

Provide a water source

Adding a water source to your garden doesn’t have to be fancy. A simple birdbath, shallow dish, or even an old pot can do the trick. Just make sure it’s placed in a shady, quiet spot and cleaned very regularly. It’s also important to position the water source in an area with high visibility – so drinking birds won’t get surprised by the neighbours’ cats. Some adjacent shelter shrubs are also a good idea.

Birds will love it for drinking, bathing and socialising, and insects like butterflies and bees will pop by for a sip too. Just chuck a few pebbles or twigs in the dish so smaller critters have something to land on.

If you’re feeling ambitious, consider a small frog-friendly pond. Use native aquatic plants and skip the fish – they tend to snack on tadpoles.

Whatever you go with, keep it chemical-free and top it up often. You’ll be surprised how quickly word gets out in the wildlife world.

Encourage pollinators

Pollinators are the quiet achievers of the garden. Native bees, butterflies, and even some birds help your plants reproduce and keep the ecosystem ticking along.

To keep them coming back, plant a mix of native flowering plants that bloom at different times of the year. That way, there’s always something on the menu. Paper daisies and wattles are a good source of pollen, while natives such as tea-trees and leptospermums provide abundant nectar in their massed flower displays.

Bonus tip: many native bees like to nest in the ground. Leave a patch of bare, sunny soil somewhere quiet in your garden. It might not look like much, but to a bee, it’s prime real estate.

Build and protect shelter spaces

Food and water are important, but wildlife also need a safe place to hang out, hide from predators, and raise their young.

That’s where shelter comes in. Think dense or prickly shrubs, hollow logs, rock piles, bark, and thick mulch. It doesn’t have to be fancy – it just has to feel safe.

You can also lend a hand with a few DIY touches. Nesting boxes are great if your garden doesn’t have mature trees. Different boxes suit different species, so do a bit of digging to see what’s local to your area – like microbats, gliders, or bird species.

Another hot tip: resist the urge to ‘clean up’ too much. Leaving some fallen branches, leaf litter, or dead wood in a corner can create perfect hidey-holes for everything from skinks to native beetles. Untidy is mighty for biodiverse backyards.

Keep pets and pesticides in check

Even the most wildlife-friendly garden can be hazardous if pets and chemicals are in the mix.

Cats and dogs are natural hunters, and even well-fed pets will stalk birds, lizards, and small mammals. Keep them indoors at night or closely supervise their outdoor time to give wildlife a fighting chance. This also protects them from vehicles and conflict with other more aggressive pets.

Minimise pesticides and herbicides where you can – they can harm pollinators, frogs and other helpful critters. Instead, try organic methods or let nature’s pest controllers (birds, spiders, ladybugs or commercially available Bacillus preparations for caterpillars) do the work for you. Recognise that sometimes, native plants being eaten is actually a sign of ecosystem health.

Small changes here can make a big difference for the animals you’re trying to attract.

Share the love

Wildlife gardens are even better when they connect with others! Here are a couple of easy ways you can make your biodiversity efforts go even further:

• Chat to your neighbours about planting native species – together, you can create little habitat ‘corridors’ that make it easier for animals to move safely between yards. It’s most important (indeed critical) to help people understand how much biodiversity there can be in just one backyard!

• Join citizen science projects like FrogID, iNaturalist, Birdata (home of the famous Birds in Backyards surveys), eBird, or Brisbane's Big Butterfly Count. You’ll learn more about the creatures visiting your garden and help scientists track species across Queensland.

• Snap photos of your garden visitors and share them online – you might inspire someone else to start their own backyard haven.

• Macrophotography, while somewhat pricey, is a wonderful way to find new insects in a garden – all without the need to catch or disturb them. There’s a big community of macrophotographers in Queensland – try searching the ‘Gram with #macrophotography #insectagram or use this National Geographic guide from some of the best.