Summer is over and it’s time to tidy up the garden for the winter. Somehow, it’s easy to visualise long, dark winter evenings keeping warm beside the fire listening to the wind and rain drumming against the windows. It’s even better with a nice mug of hot chocolate in hand to chase away those winter blues as you plan next year’s garden.

However, spare a thought for the creatures stuck outside in the elements. They need home comforts as much as we do, and fortunately it is really easy to give them a helping hand and they will repay you for it.

There are benefits to doing something positive for nature
A pile of leaves in a quiet garden corner will provide winter protection for mammals such as hedgehogs and voles as well as frogs and toads. If you don’t have trees or shrubs in your garden producing leaves, take a plastic carrier bag with you when you next go for a walk and fill it with leaves from a park or from under a roadside tree. Even when full of leaves it won’t weigh much and it will give you a genuine excuse to get outside for a stroll and a breath of fresh air.

As always there are benefits to doing something positive for nature – even warty toads and prickly hedgehogs. For a start you will end up with a heap of leaf mold which gardeners call “black gold” because it is such a fantastic nutrient for your flower borders and potted plants. Meantime, the hedgehogs and amphibians you protect over winter will feed on nasty old slugs and snails in your garden, thus stopping them from munching your seedlings next spring.

Don’t worry if you don’t have space for a leaf pile because there are lots of other things you can do, be it in a garden or on a balcony. Any hollow plant stems from the likes of fennel, teasels or similar plants will provide a retreat for lacewings, ladybirds and earwigs. Break the hollow stems into 15cm lengths and tie them together in a bundle, then to a tree branch or balcony. These particular insects live on aphids so will be really beneficial in the garden next year.

Provide a little shelter for those important creepie crawlies
Again, if you don’t have a ready supply of hollow stems at hand go foraging for them – it’s fun and gets you out and about. Alternatively, you can loosely roll corrugated cardboard and pop it inside a cut down plastic drinks bottle and tie that somewhere safe for the winter.

You can make simple shelters for beetles and other aphid eaters by piling a few thicker branches or small logs from your autumn pruning in a sheltered spot. Even a patch of grass left uncut over winter, or an upside-down flowerpot filled with straw will soon become some creature’s winter refuge. So, as you tidy up your garden ready for winter have a look around and see what you can do to provide a little bit of shelter for those important creepie crawlies stuck outside in the rain and the cold.