Creating layers of vegetation key to bringing wildlife into your garden

Brenda Jones loves to garden and has been wanting to lure more native insects into her urban backyard.

After witnessing bees flying about a salvia plant in the Adelaide Botanic Garden, she planted some herself.

"Most of the time they are attracted to blue or purple flowers, but then I noticed at Urrbrae [House gardens] that they are around the red and white salvias, so I planted those as well," Brenda says.

Some time later, Brenda spotted a blue-banded bee — a solitary species that have stings but rarely use them — come to collect nectar.

"It was flying around very fast and very hard to catch on camera," Brenda says.

"I went into the house, got my tripod and camera, and had to hide behind a rose bush to take the photo because every time it saw me, it moved."

Brenda's patience and clever photography earned her first prize in ABC Radio Adelaide's Talkback Gardening Photographic Competition.

The competition encouraged listeners to send in photos and explanations of what they had done to bring wildlife into their gardens.

Life requires variety

James Smith, an urban zoologist and a judge for the competition, says that while plants, along with food and water, are essential to attracting wildlife into gardens, creating different layers of "structure" is even more important.

James believes five structural layers are required to create optimum urban habitats:

• Tall trees
• Tall and small shrubs
• Ground cover and grasses
• Leaf litter and ground structure such as rocks and logs
• Bare ground

"We don't have, for example, fairy wrens down in the city because they rely on the complex habitats that small and tall shrubs provide, the density that they can flee into, to escape potential predators," James told ABC Radio Adelaide.

Introduce a water source

Louise Watson, another winner in the photo competition, wanted to build a low-maintenance rock garden in front of the house she shares with partner Saul, at Hawker near South Australia's Flinders Ranges.

"He got heaps of rocks off his paddocks and he's gone and dumped them out the front of our house," she says.

"We ended up thinking of making a dry creek bed, and then it was like, 'maybe we'll have a little pool down the end', so he brought the tractor in and it ended up being a bigger water pond that we lined."

Fed with water from their dam and equipped with a float to keep it at a constant level, it has attracted a variety of life, including dragonflies, finches, willy wagtails, lizards, small aquatic lifeforms, and even a frog.

Attract the butterflies

Necia Hampton planted Australian species throughout her garden in the Adelaide Hills, while running a native animal rescue, some time ago.

"We have lots of milkweed plants that come up every year, and we had hundreds of monarch butterflies in the garden this year," she says.

"There's a little patch of flowers that we planted and an Australian painted lady butterfly came into that, which we don't see very often."

Her opportunity to capture the butterfly arrived while she was having a coffee in the garden.

"It just landed there, so I went over with my camera, and I can get a macro on my camera from a little distance away, so I wasn't close enough to frighten it," Necia says.

Look outside your space

If you don't have a garden to place a variety of flowering plants, or the space to add some trees, James suggests looking further afield when considering how to bring wildlife into the area.

Local parks, creeks and schools may provide the tall trees coverage for example.

Your neighbours may have certain plants in their garden, which then gives you the opportunity to add different ones around your home.

"By having a whole range of habitats, we increase the number of native species we can get, and therefore, we increase the complexity and the amount of biodiversity we attract to backyards."