Back in June 2019 the Advertiser featured an article about a group of people in Bangor who were concerned about our continuing loss of native wildlife, and had decided to do something about it by improving the areas around their homes for nature.

This was the Wildlife Group at Montgomery Court & Manor in Bangor, a sheltered housing scheme owned and managed by Alpha Housing.
So, more than four years later we asked their spokesperson, Victor Allister, how they’d got on?
“Pretty well I think, given that none of us had done anything like this before, but as we learned along the way, the basics were a mix of habitats, food, shelter and water. We recently counted about 70 native flowering plants around the place.
These have encouraged many insects to set up home here, including bumblebees, and we have had at least ten species of nesting birds. Hedgehogs roam at night and we even have had a visit by a badger; not bad for suburban east Bangor”.

How was that achieved?
“First, none of it would have been possible without the active encouragement and support of Alpha Housing management, which not only invested in new plants, but changed to more nature-friendly grounds maintenance, including no-mow areas and rewilded margins and corners, not just for us but at all its other schemes. One of their most important decisions was to rule out the use of herbicides other than for invasive species. Wildlife revival and poisonous chemicals don’t mix”.
“We now have about 200 square feet of planters dedicated solely to native wildflowers, but these are complemented by crab apples, hollies and willows, indeed, anything which is good for
insects, including non-native plants such as buddleia and valerian which are attractive to pollinators, the bees, butterflies, moths and so on”.
“The birds and other animals are attracted here by the abundance of insects and other invertebrates, but they also need water and places to shelter and nest, so we have bird baths and ground-level water bowls, many bird nest boxes, insect hotels, a south-facing bat box and a hedgehog home, although we’re not completely sure if our hedgehogs live there or under the green compost corner. And, by the way, green compost is a great addition to any garden because it provides food and shelter for huge numbers of invertebrate species”.
Asked to sum up, Victor wanted to make the point that gardening for wildlife is not about letting everything go wild, with so-called weeds dominating. “Of course we need flowers such as dandelions blooming in spring to provide food for early bumblebees, but we have demonstrated that you can do positive things for nature without compromising the normal and expected beauty of gardens. We always kept that in mind, and hopefully some of our experiments and successes will not only sustain nature here but provide a well of knowledge and experience that might benefit other communities. We’d be happy to share”.