Create habitat hideaways in your Wild Space this winter

With the winter months on the way, our wonderful moths and butterflies are beginning to look for places to hunker down until the spring. Here’s how you can help them by creating habitat hideaways in your Wild Space!

Leaf it be

Many different butterflies and moths spend the winter nestled down amongst leaf litter, usually in the form of a caterpillar or a chrysalis. These piles of leaves help shelter them from the elements, like cold, wet and wind, as well as helping them stay hidden from potential predators.

If you have a Wild Space that includes trees and shrubs, creating a leaf pile might be as simple as letting fallen leaves stay where they are. Or, if you’d prefer things to be a little bit neater, rake your leaves into piles at the edges of your Wild Space or at the back of borders. You can even pile them in a wooden box, wire cage or large pot.

Working with a smaller Wild Space like a balcony? Gather some leaves into a tray or small wooden box for easy clean-up after the insects have emerged in spring in summer.

 

Stick to it

As well as leaf piles, you can create habitat hideaways using a mixture of logs, sticks, leaves and other nature materials. Woody stems can provide sturdy anchors for chrysalises to attach to and old hollow plant stems provide a refuge for caterpillars, like the Hemp-Agrimony Plume moth.

Nature doesn’t mind messy, so you can let your pile be a bit higgledy-piggledy. Or, if you want things a bit neater, start with the biggest logs and branches at the bottom and build you structure up in layers of smaller twigs, stems and leaves. Placing your habitat pile near to a patch of wildflowers or in a flower border provides overwintering insects with a source of nectar when they emerge in spring.

Be a hedge hero

Hedges can provide brilliant hiding places for adult butterflies and moths and chrysalises over the winter months. And, with the right hedge plants, hedges can also be home to overwintering eggs and caterpillars, helping keep them tucked away during the cold months and providing vital nourishment when they hatch or re-emerge in the spring.

Now is the perfect time of year to plant a hedge – try choosing species that caterpillars will enjoy snacking on, like Hawthorn, Blackthorn and Dog Rose. Don’t have the time or space for a living hedge? Try creating a dead hedge instead. Simply gather branches and twigs and build them up horizontally, packing them in tightly to create a sturdy structure. Then use vertical branches or stakes to hold it in place. Dead hedges can be a wonderful refuge for all kinds of wildlife, including butterflies and moths.

Already have a hedge? The best thing you can do to help butterflies and moths this winter is to trim it less – try every few years rather than every year. Or trim different areas at different times. This helps keep some areas safe for the caterpillars and eggs that have already made their home there and is particularly important for butterflies and moths that like to lay their eggs on new growth.

Do you have a garden, patio, balcony or community space where you’ve taken action for butterflies and moths? Register it as a Wild Space today at Let’s Create Wild Spaces – Wild Spaces (wild-spaces.co.uk)