Be a backyard biodiversity warrior
|Published
Durban — Become an eco-custodian to South Africa’s wildlife, right from your backyard. Reap the rich rewards and fall in love with our vibrant biodiversity that flies, swarms, and crawls with life.
Local is the lekkerste: Growing indigenous plants means more habitat creation for our local wildlife, while also increasing our native plant species reduced by urbanisation and deforestation. SA’s critters and greens have a lekker advantage of being naturally adaptive to our environment, meaning less maintenance and more life in your garden.
Planting for pollinators: Attract bees, butterflies, birds, and ecobarometers like frogs and lizards by planting salvia, borage, lavender, and antirrhinum.
Companion planting: Get your edibles elated, your flowers flourishing and seeds spreading by adding pentas, echinacea, marigolds and sunflowers to the veggie patch.
Organic pest-control: Naturally repel a variety of pests by planting basil (for flies), citronella grass and rosemary (for mozzies), as well as chrysanthemum (for spider mites).
Helpful predators: Avoiding pesticides attracts natural predators such as ladybugs, spiders, dragonflies and praying mantises who make quick work of mealybugs, aphids, scale, and more.
Wonderful water: Give your garden critters a drink with water features and birdbaths. Enjoy watching all your favourite friends come to visit.
House wildlife: Install bird, bat, bee, and owl houses around your garden for fewer rodents, mozzies, and locusts. Become a beekeeper and harvest your own honey too!
Indulge in indigenous: Clivias, vygies, African lily (Agapanthus spp.), crane flowers and salvias attract colourful indigenous flyers for your viewing pleasure.
Evade the invasive: Remove invasive plant species from your garden. Aliens may overconsume water, negatively transform the land, and hinder our local biodiversity.
Happy soil = happy plants: Make sure you’ve got good drainage, use compost, mulch up, and fertilise.
Visit your favourite GCA Garden Centre where you can buy all sorts of wildlife accessories and gorgeous gogga-attracting plants. You’ll find all the compost and fertiliser you need too, as well as some very stylish birdbaths and cute garden decor.
Independent on Saturday