Gardeners, by their very nature, tend to like wildlife — unless it's the sort that eat their crops and flowers! But with a little forethought, you can add a whole extra dimension to your gardening pleasure and employ a whole army of helpers in the endless battle against pests.

Chief among these helpers will be birds. If you can encourage them to nest in your garden, a single pair of small birds will stuff more than one thousand unwanted bugs from your garden down the expectant throats of their chicks, daily for several weeks. And this is usually at a critical time of year, when the bugs are just getting ready to attack your fruit blossom and newly emerging vegetables. And here's the even better news: with such a convenient supply of baby food, many species will be encouraged to have a second brood of chicks, so you gain twice over!

So how do you encourage birds to nest in your garden? It's a simple matter of bribery: if you feed them with food scraps and seed through the leaner winter months and then provide suitable nesting boxes, come spring, they are very likely to take up residence, particularly if you continue to make food available to the adults.

Having their own adult food on tap allows them to spend all their time scouring your garden of unwanted bugs for their offspring. Certainly, you will have to spend a little on bird seed, but no more than you would spend on pesticides, and you gain immeasurably by the certain knowledge no chemical squirts have touched the fruit and other goodies growing in your garden. It's a shrewd investment that can't be faulted.

Nest boxes are available in all shapes and sizes, tailor-made for different species. But what they all have in common is the need for great care about their location.

They must never be placed where the full mid-day sun can touch them, otherwise the chicks will die of overheating. Nor should they be placed where icy blasts of air can freeze the chicks. The best position of all is in a shady area facing the western sunset and high enough from the ground to deter four legged predators.

If you live in a country where frogs or other amphibians have a taste for slugs and other vegetable eating pests, a small investment in a wildlife pond in a quiet corner of your garden will pay handsome dividends. Whilst they might lurk in the pond all day in a soporific stupor — don't be fooled. Come nightfall, your frogs will be off for a night on the town to dine out on the slugs and other pests, just as the slugs themselves are about to feast on your carefully cultivated cabbages!

A wildlife pond doesn't have to be too fancy. So a simple shallow depression a foot (30cm) or so deep with gently sloping sides, lined with a piece of butyl rubber (isobutylene isoprene) and with a few oxygenating plants, such as the ubiquitous Canadian Pondweed, is all you need.

And, as Kevin Costner said in "Field Of Dreams": they will come. In fact, you'll be amazed how quickly the pond life will move in — apparently out of thin air — even in an urban area.

So, with the birds tackling the bugs during the day and the frog "night shift" guarding your vegetables by night, you can sleep soundly, ready for another day of enjoying your garden.

Tags: Wildlife Garden

Another thing that new organic gardeners become confused about, and sometimes even frustrated with, is figuring out how to control pests and bugs in their gardens. It doesn't matter if you're growing roses, annuals, perennials, bushes, trees, vegetables or something else… all plants have one or more bugs which seem to like to feed on either the plant leaves and stems, the flowers themselves, or both.

The most natural way to control pests in your garden is to simply hand pick the bugs off of leaves and flowers as you find them. This is a time consuming process for large gardens though, and many people do not like controlling pests this way alone. Thankfully there are many other things you can do to help with the process naturally though.

One step you'll need to take is effective weed control. Be sure to leave enough space between your plantings to allow yourself room to pull up weeds as you see them. In vegetable gardens particularly, it's helpful to leave a wide enough space between the rows which will allow you to take a hoe to the area, because this makes weeding go much faster. If you pull or hoe weeds while they're still quite young and small, you'll see the best results too. Because they come out of the ground much easier, and they don't have a chance to start dropping seeds and drawing in a lot of bugs and pests to the area.

Another natural way to control pests though, is through planting itself. By planting certain herbs and flowers around your garden, you can naturally control and even repel a wide variety of common garden pests.

Planting chives around your apple trees for instance, will help prevent scab. And if you plant chives around your roses, they help prevent black spot.

Elderberry is a plant which can be used to get rid of garden moles. Just stick branches and leaves from this plant down into the mole holes, and they'll leave the garden. You can also make a tea or wash with the leaves from this plant, and it will help repel aphids, carrot root fly, peach tree borers, and cucumber beetles too.

Garlic is another wonderful, all natural repellant for your garden too. The flavor of garlic can be abosorbed by other plants though, so don't plant it near any vegetables that might taste bad with a hint of garlic flavor in them.

Lemon Balm is another wonderful, all natural herb which works excellently as a repellant for a variety of things. You can sprinkle lemon balm leaves throughout your garden to repel a number of different bugs and pests, and you can even rub the crushed leaves on your skin to prevent mosquitoe bites too.

Tags: Natural Pest Control, Organic Gardening

Rock gardening is an easy way to make your lawn and garden beautiful, yet keep it very low maintenance. Rock gardens are particularly useful for areas of your yard which tend to be quite dry, but they're also quite beautiful in water run off areas too, because you can design them to look like miniature river beds.

Creating a rock garden isn't too difficult, but there is some planning involved. The first step to planning your rock garden is to select the area which you plan to place it. You'll also want to decide on the types of plants you'll have in your rock garden, and what kind of rocks you'd like to have as well.

In most cases, little river rocks and pebbles are excellent to use for a general rock garden bed. You may want to select your rocks and pebbles based on color or uniformity of size and shape, or you might want to simply go out and collect a variety of interesting rocks to put into the garden instead.

The most attractive rock gardens usually have a base rock bed of small pebbles and stones though, and a variety of plants cropping up between them. Then larger, more interesting elements are placed into the rock garden as focal points, shade areas, and to simply make the rock garden more attractive.

Some rock gardens for instance, have a few larger rocks or even small boulders placed in strategic areas to create both interest and variety in the garden. Placing small boulders in your rock garden also makes it easy to add a small fountain or trickling stream too, plus you'll be able to plant moss and other interesting plants on the boulders themselves close to the water.

Once you've chosen the location for your rock garden though, you'll need to fully clear the area as best as you can. Remove all weeds and as much of the roots from previous weeds and plants as you can, then remove any other unwanted debris. You'll be left with a fairly mundane dirt lot, but this is the blank canvas you'll be able to create your beautiful rock garden in.

After the garden area has been cleared, you'll need to place your plants into this area. Unlike other gardens though, a rock garden tends to have small plants that sprout up here and there. So you don't want to place too many plants, and you don't want them to be too close together either. Just scatter a few in various areas of the new garden plot.

After you have your plants in the ground, if you plan to place larger boulders in the rock garden, put those in their chosen locations first. Then start spreading your base rock or pebbles. Make the rock layer as thick as you'd like, and be sure to get the rocks in close to the base of your new plants and boulders too. Rock garden plants usually like to climb over, around, and through the rock bed that you create, so don't be afraid of putting the rocks too close.

Now you simply need to place any finishing touches or focal points into your rock garden. You can place water elements, interesting pieces of wood or even old wagon wheels if you'd like.

Tags: Rock Gardening