- School competition to encourage wildlife friendly gardening and Natural England' Big Wildlife Garden website gives a helping hand for wildlife this spring.
- With the welcome sights and sounds of spring tentatively emerging, now is the ideal time to look at ways in which we can all help wildlife recover from the harshness of Britain’s long, cold winter.

Gardening in a wildlife-friendly way can considerably increase the diversity of plants and animals and create an oasis for species in decline such as hedgehogs, holly blue butterflies, song thrushes, bumble bees and stag beetles.

Natural England’s innovative Big Wildlife Garden website is the perfect place to get advice on how to invite wildlife into even the most humble garden this spring.

Poul Christensen, Chair of Natural England, said: "The Big Wildlife Garden is a great way to find out how to make any garden more wildlife-friendly. From private gardens and allotments, to school gardens and backyards, there is an opportunity for anyone who is passionate about wildlife to get involved and help turn this harsh winter into a bumper spring and summer."

With its blossoming online community of wildlife and garden enthusiasts, the Big Wildlife Garden encourages people of all ages to attract more wildlife into their gardens and have fun building up points for all the wildlife friendly changes they make. The site also enables users to share their diaries of seasonal changes, swap gardening tips and upload their favourite photos of wildlife.

Advice on the Big Wildlife Garden is easy to follow and one of its aims is to inspire children to enjoy the natural world and learn how to enrich outdoor spaces. Groups - such as scouts and girl guides - can sign up to get recommendations for ways to make their local sites more wildlife-friendly. The search is also on for England's best school wildlife garden - schools have until July 2010 to make as many improvements as possible in the school's green space/garden to qualify for the Green Award level. Children can create a wildflower meadow, build a pond and install nests for bumble bees - whatever it takes to collect enough points!

Poul Christensen concluded: "With spring on its way and there is no better time to start preparing your garden for wildlife. Gardens represent an important area of natural habitat for many species and with over 15 million gardens in Britain, there is enormous potential for enhancing wildlife. Building up a nationwide network of wildlife-friendly gardens can make a big difference and give our wildlife a real lift after the harshness of winter."

Help create the biggest virtual wildlife reserve in the country by signing up to Natural England's Big Wildlife Garden at: www.bwg.naturalengland.org.uk Enter the 'Big Wildlife Garden, School of the Year' competition: www.bwg.naturalengland.org.uk/news/show/2

What to look out for in your garden this Spring

Frogspawn: Usually frogs will have returned to our ponds and pools but a slight delay because of the weather means should start seeing them return to lay eggs. If they haven’t’ arrived yet then this is a chance to clear the dead leaves and winter debris from the bottom of your ponds before they do because it is best not to disturb them once frogspawn is laid.

Butterflies: When the warm weather arrives, so will the first of the season’s butterflies Brimstone is one of the first of the year to be seen in some gardens as well as the small tortoiseshell, one of the brightest visitors. Butterflies emerging from hibernation will head straight for early spring flowers like primrose, dandelion, sweet rocket and wallflower.  Most gardens will have some food plants: weeds like dandelions or trees like birch and willow but the more there are the more species a garden can potentially support. Buddleja ‘the butterfly bush’ is famous for attracting butterflies so now is the time to prune them. Other favourites include iceplant, lavender and verbena so start planting these now to make sure there is plenty to attract the summer butterflies. Butterflies and moths are important pollinators and good indicators of a healthy environment.  Keep a look out for those sheltered ‘hotspots’ in full sunshine where butterflies and moths will congregate.

Wildflower meadows: By creating areas of wildflower meadow you can help increase the variety of wildlife in your garden. Preparing the soil well with a cornfield mix which includes cornflower, corncockle and poppy, will give you an instant result for the summer. Meadow flowers will attract many different kinds of insect and these, together with plant seeds, will be food for birds and small mammals such as voles, shrews and hedgehogs. A wildflower meadow doesn’t have to cover your whole garden, you can create one on just a few square metres of soil. Choose an area in the garden that has an open, sunny area and is not shaded by trees, shrubs or walls. Avoid areas that will be disturbed too often by people and pets – few meadow plants will survive frequent trampling. Also, if possible, find an area in the garden that has not been recently treated with fertilisers. This is important because many typical meadow flowers and grasses do best on poor soils with low fertility. Some low-growing wildflowers may already be present in your lawn, leaving an area of lawn uncut in the spring and summer will reveal what grasses and flowers are growing there.

Birds: It is important to keep feeding birds – it could be a false spring and the cold snap could return. Providing a mix of food such as peanuts, seeds, kitchen scraps and fat balls, plus natural food such as berries and seed-heads, will attract a wide range of birds. Don’t put whole peanuts in feeders - these could choke any young fledglings.It is also not too late to put up a bird box. Now’s the time to prune back ivy – the birds have eaten all the berries but they haven’t started nesting yet.Winter birds are still around and you might have noticed an influx of redwings and fieldfares finding shelter from the cold in the last few months.  Their departure once it starts to warm up is a sure sign that summer is on its way and spring birds like chiffchaffs will come back from their Mediterranean wintering grounds.

Plants:This is a good time to cut back your buddleia to ensure abundant nectar-rich flowers in the summer. Cut back your dogwood now before it comes into bud to guarantee brightly coloured stems next winter. As the soil warms up, March is also a good time for planting shrubs and perennials. Look in other peoples’ gardens to see what’s flowering. Winter flowering plants like lungwort, hellebores, snowdrops, and shrubs like sweet box and wintersweet will be filling the nectar gap, so think about planting these in time for next year.

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