Wildlife friendly gardening: current practices, constraints and effective interventions

The ability of domestic gardens, or yards, to support wildlife is a key factor determining environmental impacts of urbanisation. Gardens’ capacity to support biodiversity is large, but often compromised by management decisions resulting from householders’ values, attitudes, needs and resources. Using an online, nationally representative, survey of 478 UK residents we quantify the extent of wildlife friendly gardening. A typical garden could not support vegetation growth in one third of its area, contained 5 out of 18 wildlife friendly features, and had lawns that were mown every 3.5 weeks. Pesticides and fertilisers were applied in approximately half of gardens. Multiple regression models reveal that competing garden uses, insufficient biodiversity knowledge, space, time and financial resources and limited interest in supporting wildlife are major constraints on residents’ abilities to conduct wildlife friendly gardening. Social norms and aesthetic considerations were less influential constraints. We then conducted a controlled online experiment testing the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase residents’ willingness to install three wildlife friendly features. In order of increasing acceptability to residents these were: nettle beds, ponds and wildflower meadows. Residents with stronger nature connectedness were more willing to install these features. Financial incentives (cost free, self-installed features) and practical support (cost free professional installation) significantly increased residents' reported willingness to install each feature. Interventions that tackled cost constraints, rather than residents’ ability to self-install, appear particularly effective. Our findings demonstrate the marked potential to increase gardens’ biodiversity value and a successful approach to intervention design to achieve this.