Wildlife gardening can transform even a modest urban space into a thriving habitat. In these videos, UK ecological gardener Chris Baines shares how he created his own wildlife garden and pond decades ago and how it’s doing today.
Also see Advice for Starting a New Pond to prepare for creating a pond in your backyard.
Wildlife Gardening With Chris Baines
Want to create a wildlife garden in the city?
In the two videos (below) from the 1980s, naturalist and wildlife gardener Chris Baines shows us how he transformed his suburban garden in Birmingham (UK) into a thriving wildlife habitat. His goal was to create a wildflower meadow, woodland edge, and wildlife pond to provide natural habitat for local wildlife. Through an understanding of ecosystems, he shows how we can create vital sanctuaries for birds, amphibians, pollinators, and more.
The third video is fairly recent and follows up on the garden decades after he first planted it.
People say they want something low-maintenance with flowers year-round. This [wildlife garden] more or less ticks both.
Chris Baines on Wildlife Gardens
Because this pond and garden are in the United Kingdom, many of the plants mentioned are unlikely to be native to or suitable for gardens in Canada or the United States. The general principles on wildlife gardening, however, are relevant.
Baines’ yard is much grander than many of us have, but everything he shows could be done on a smaller scale.
I found the videos quite inspiring and encouraging for my own shift toward wildlife gardening.
Recommended Book
RHS Companion to Wildlife Gardening (2023) by Chris Baines is a revised edition of the best-selling book, How to Make a Wildlife Garden, first published in 1985.
Contents
Wildlife Gardening Videos
These first two videos show the creation of the wildlife garden and pond and provide lots of useful tips.
The Making of a Wildlife Garden (Part 1)
The Making of a Wildlife Garden (Part 2)
Chris Baines in his own Wildlife Setting
In this follow-up video, Chris Baines speaks about his wildlife garden thirty-five years after its creation, reflecting on how it has matured into a resilient and diverse habitat.
Despite being in the middle of a city, the garden has become a wildlife haven.
He highlights how the garden now thrives with minimal maintenance, supporting everything from birds and bees to frogs, dragonflies, and endangered great crested newts.
The key, he says, is designing with natural processes in mind. By combining a pond within a yard layered with native plantings, it’s both a welcoming home for wildlife and year-round beauty.
Transcript
Interviewer:
Chris, it’s lovely to have you on the YouTube video, and it’s so nice to see this garden in person. I’ve seen versions of it from your books and slides. It’s amazing how you’ve turned your whole front garden pretty much over to water and wildlife—so different from the usual thing.
It really struck me because my dad, who was a sportsman and squash player right up into his 90s, read your book. He’d never done much gardening, but he turned his front garden into a lovely wildlife space with a big pond, and it gave him endless pleasure. Just hearing the birds—it’s clearly a wonderful idea.
When did that lightning moment happen for you—when did you think: right, front garden, water, wildlife?
Chris Baines:
Well, there’s a negative side to it. I spent quite a lot of my youth mowing lawns in the parks and thought: never again—I’m not going to mow lawns.
Interviewer:
So you have actually mown lawns?
Chris Baines:
Oh yes, I’ve mown lawns. I even wrote off a mower for the Sheffield Parks Department when I was about 18—nobody told me how to stop it. I drove it straight into the river! Hopefully they’ve forgotten.
The thing is, this is a small garden in the middle of Wolverhampton—it’s very urban. But it’s leafy because the Victorians planted lots of street trees. What I wanted was a space outside the window that changed with the seasons.
At the time, I was training as a horticulturist and then as a landscape architect, and evergreen groundcover was the big thing. But I’d worked in retirement housing where you couldn’t tell whether it was January or July. Later, I worked in inner-city housing—really grim places in Brixton and Hackney during the ‘80s. Same thing: no sense of season.
I wanted gardens that told me it was January—or February—something that changed subtly through the year. That’s what this garden does. The pond gives you feedback every day. You open the blinds and see whether it’s raining or frosted over.
So this garden is really about bringing the English countryside into the middle of the city—especially that sense of changing seasons. That’s why I’m thrilled when the wood anemones start coming through, the primroses are everywhere, but the bluebells haven’t flowered yet. That subtle shifting—I just love it. And it’s something we’ve lost from the wider landscape.
Interviewer:
And it’s much lower maintenance. I love how water bounces light in—it really adds so much. Would you say that water is the number one thing to add for wildlife?
Chris Baines:
Yes, I would. That, and just thinking about where your garden fits in. You can only achieve so much in a garden this size, but once you start seeing it as a kind of service station for the wider landscape.
Interviewer:
I love that analogy—you’ve always used it. Like little filling stations that connect green areas.
Chris Baines:
Exactly. There are about 30 houses on this street, and probably five of them have ponds. One neighbor, Ruth, a few doors down, already had one when we moved in. She said, “You’re Chris Baines—I’ve got your book!” Her small front lawn is currently full of fritillaries—snake’s head fritillaries. I’ve envied them for over 30 years.
Next door, though, it’s all lawn. So although I don’t have a lawn, the song thrushes collect their nesting mud here and find their worms next door. It’s the mosaic of habitats that matters.
We’ve lost that medieval pattern of hedgerows and small fields from the countryside. But in this kind of neighborhood, my garden is just a glade in the urban forest. That’s why the birdlife is so rich—these are woodland birds, as far as they’re concerned.
Interviewer:
And your hedge—I noticed it’s a coniferous hedge. I was surprised to hear you praising it. Most people think of them as over-dominant.
Chris Baines:
Yes, I’m an optimist. We inherited the hedge, so I thought: what can we make of it? I might have planted beech or hornbeam for more seasonal variation, but since we have a Leylandii hedge, I’ve grown holly and ivy through it to add texture and interest.
It provides shelter and enclosure, and there’s always a pair of blackbirds and a hedge sparrow nesting there. It’s part of the whole.
Interviewer:
And your Daphne mezereum—it’s beautiful. I didn’t realize it was native.
Chris Baines:
It is! And it has a glorious scent. In a small garden like this, scent really matters. Right by the front door, we’ve got a winter honeysuckle that’s been glorious for weeks. People don’t realize that native plants can be so lovely.
The primroses are stunning. Ruth’s fritillaries are native. I have a glorious honeysuckle on the far hedge that flowers through summer. The moths love it, and then the bats feed on the moths.
Interviewer:
So in this part of the garden—excluding the back where you grow vegetables—how much maintenance would you say it takes?
Chris Baines:
Not much. People say they want something low-maintenance with flowers year-round. This more or less ticks both.
I spend a few hours on the pond—thinning marginal plants, pulling out green slime in hot weather, battling duckweed. But maybe six hours a year in total.
If you get the planting right, with oxygenators and snails, it’s largely self-cleaning. Use subsoil on the pond bottom—people are always surprised by that. But dragonflies need that muddy bottom to develop. They live two of their three years down there.
Interviewer:
And you’ve never had to clear it out?
Chris Baines:
Not until we had a leak after about 20 years. The liner perished, so we had to replace it. That was high-maintenance! But this new pond is about 15 years old now.
Interviewer:
And around the pond, you’ve got woodruff, wood anemones, primroses—it’s beautiful.
Chris Baines:
Yes, and I only go in there once a year to pull out sycamore seedlings. Otherwise, the shade suppresses most weeds. The hellebores and snowflakes give winter interest.
Interviewer:
It’s a very usable garden. I love the chairs in the front, and that dry-stone wall—
Chris Baines:
I built that! All from stones lying around the garden, with a friend. We needed a level terrace outside the French doors. It’s full of crevices, so the newts winter in there. The wall links different parts of the garden together.
Interviewer:
So total maintenance—probably not enough?
Chris Baines:
Exactly! It’s more about timing. I missed planting wallflowers this year because I was away. I just planted lots of alliums, and to protect them from squirrels, I’ve covered them with netting.
Interviewer:
I tried cayenne pepper on mine—
Chris Baines:
I do the same! Squirrels can be a problem—especially in parks. They damage trees terribly. But gardens do need managing. If I let this one go wild, it’d be all sycamores and brambles.
There’s a difference between gardens and the wider landscape. And rewilding in the right places is making amazing progress—take Knepp, for example.
They’ve got purple emperor butterflies now. I’ve never seen one! They used to be confined to treetops, but they thrive in scrub woodland—which is what Knepp now has.
That scrub also rebuilds soil and stores carbon. So letting things regenerate naturally can make a huge difference.
Interviewer:
It does highlight the damage we’ve done with fertilizers and pesticides.
Chris Baines:
Yes, and I trained during the revolution in the 1960s. Our chemistry professor proudly told us he helped invent DDT.
Now I look back and wonder. We don’t use artificial fertilizers here—the nitrogen cycle works naturally. Gardeners think they have to feed everything, but it’s just not true.
Those nutrients wash into rivers. Look at the River Wye—polluted from chicken farms. The salmon are gone. But people don’t see the connections.
In a garden, you can start to rebuild that understanding of how everything is linked.
Interviewer:
It’s true—even things like the cat population affect birds.
Chris Baines:
Yes, we’ve got a huge number of cats around here. I’m amazed the song thrushes and robins still manage. But that’s the point—just noticing these things, like how the pond connects to the wall and the nesting, helps you understand bigger ecological issues.
Interviewer:
Fascinating. Thank you so much, Chris. It’s been wonderful to see your garden—and we’ve been lucky with the weather, too!
Chris Baines:
Thanks. Lovely to have you here.
Wildlife Gardening Tips
Here are some tips from the videos along with some notes:
- Start with what you’ve got.
Before making changes, take stock of what’s already in the garden. Map it out on paper. “It’s much easier to move things around on a piece of paper than it is to move ponds and shift trees.” - Fit in key habitats—even in a small garden.
Chris’s garden includes “a wildflower meadow, wrapped around by a woodland edge,” with “a mini wetland, a wildlife garden pond” as the centerpiece. These are all habitats under threat in the wider countryside. - Make it seasonal.
He wanted “a space outside the window that changed with the seasons,” not one that looked the same year-round. The mix of wildflowers, native trees, and pond plants provides that constant change. - Plan the pond carefully.
The pool (pond) is the one thing you really can’t shuffle around afterwards.” Mark it out with canes first and live with the layout for a few days. Include shelving edges, shallow zones, and a deep end to support diverse plant and wildlife needs.
To me, the ideal location is away from deciduous trees (due to fallen leaves that mess up the water and roots that can wreck pond liners) but have some shade from the sun. - Use a pond liner ‘sandwich.’
Lay down felt, then butyl rubber sheeting, then another layer of felt. “The felt underneath stops the sharp stones coming through. The felt on top stops the heron’s beak getting through.” He then added a layer of soil to accommodate wildlife like dragonflies that need “muck” to nest in.
In my own pond, I never used a top layer of felt or soil. Instead, it happened naturally over time as leaves and whatnot settle on the pond floor. I agree this soil layer is important (whether you add it from the start or let it form) yet something gardeners with decorative ponds tend to want to get rid of.
Chris mentions in the third video that years later the pond liner developed a leak and had to be replaced. That’s something pond companies warn us about during installation and something we all dread. Rubber liners typically have a lifespan of 15-20 years, depending on conditions. - Choose a range of water plants.
Create a variety of depths for different plant types: oxygenators in the bottom, floaters like water crowfoot, emergents like flag irises at the margins, and marsh plants in shallow areas. “The planting process is really very easy… just weigh the oxygenator down with a brick.” - Be ready for maintenance.
“Water plants don’t know when to stop growing.” Chris removes excess plants every spring, putting them on a tarpaulin overnight so creatures can crawl back into the pond.
I do the same thing to prevent the aquatic plants from overtaking my pond. A good pair of pond waders makes the job easier. - Observe at night.
“You’ll miss out on an awful lot of the most exciting pond life if you only go looking for it in the middle of the day.” He uses a torch at night to spot frogs, smooth newts, and great crested newts.
This is true for the whole garden. Half our pollinators including moths are on night shift. - Sow wildflowers carefully.
For a new meadow area, mix a small amount of wildflower seed with silver sand to spread it evenly. Rake it in lightly and let the rain do the rest. “It’s really good having left the soil for a week or two… it makes a very firm seed bed.”
I would add that, when choosing wildflower seed mix, check that every single seed in the mix belongs in your area. Some mixes are entirely non-native and/or annual seeds.
The cardboard method works nicely to convert grass lawn to garden beds. - Let your meadow grow.
A wildflower meadow may “look a bit scruffy by the end of July,” but earlier in the year it’s full of color and life. He lets it grow until the flowers have set seed, then cuts a mini hay crop.
We think of meadows as maintenance-free, but, to encourage the desired plants, some tending is required a few times a year. - Manage for succession.
Different wildflowers bloom at different times, so adjust your mowing schedule. “If I mow this lot now, that’ll be fine for the cowslips, but I shall wipe out the yarrow completely.”
This is stuff we all learn as we go. - Replace fences with hedges.
Fences “aren’t nearly as good for wildlife as hedges.” Chris plants mainly hawthorn, plus native species like field maple, dog rose, and wild privet to create a dense, food-rich hedge.
Many species mentioned are native to the UK, not North America, so be sure to use local native species when following these tips. - Use mulch to suppress weeds.
There is no escaping weeds including invasive species but mulch can help slow them. - Layer the woodland edge.
Wildlife need plants at every level including ground covers, herbaceous perennials, low-lying shrubs, climbing vines, hedges and trees. It’s about layers from low to high and everything in between: just what animals need. - Look to the countryside for ideas.
Even with a garden full of habitat, Chris emphasizes the importance of visiting natural places for inspiration. Watch for native plant examples in the wild like native honeysuckle which supports a surprising diversity of wildlife, from leaf miners to white admiral butterflies.
Resources
Book
RHS Companion to Wildlife Gardening (2023)
by Chris Baines
This best-selling book was first published as How to Make a Wildlife Garden, and launched at the 1985 Chelsea Flower Show, making wildlife a mainstream issue for gardeners and the public. Now fully revised and updated by the author, this beautiful new freshly illustrated edition highlights the changes in garden wildlife over the past 35 years
More Tips
Want Pollinators in Your Garden?
- Choose plants, trees, and shrubs used by local wildlife for food and habitat during all stages of life. Options will be different in each growing region.
- Avoid products like pesticides that are toxic to pollinators and other animals in the food chain.
- Keep it natural: sustainable gardens are not tidy. Dead and decaying things nourish living things.
Might your neighbors object? This shares how to warm them up to the idea.
I hope you enjoy the videos as much as I did.
~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛