Alice Whitehead from Garden Organic shares ways of supporting some of the unsung, but incredibly useful, invertebrate heroes in your garden
While damsels dazzle and butterflies breeze stunningly through the garden, it can be easy to overlook the less colourful, smaller, less-sightly invertebrates at ground level. But they are no less beneficial to your micro-ecosystem.
Invertebrates actually make a larger contribution to garden biodiversity than any other group of ‘micro-fauna’. An average garden could be home to 2,000 different species, living in trees and flowers, in soil, compost heaps and buildings.
But away from the more visible, ‘trapeze artist’ spiders and honeybee ‘highways’, down at the base of plants in bed and borders ground-dwelling invertebrates are working just as hard.
Let’s look at some of these under-feet heroes
Hidden in garden soil and leaf litter, you might find up to 29 different types of earthworms (annelids) for starters. Just 25 of these miniature combine harvesters per square metre can digest up to 50 tonnes of organic matter and turn it into bitesize pieces. In doing so they release vital nutrients and allow bacteria, fungi and plants to feed. Earthworm burrows also aerate the soil, letting oxygen flow freely and improving drainage that helps alleviate flooding.
Under flowerpots and in compost heaps, woodlice (Isopoda) are the bin men of the garden floor, and are naturally abundant in a healthy garden ecosystem. These 1cm (½ in) long, grey ‘pillbugs’ feed on all kinds of organic matter and help speed up decomposition.
Above them, in the undergrowth, predatory and ground beetles eat plant matter but also act as beneficial predators keeping other more problematic invertebrates such as aphids, and their larvae, under control. Many of the 350 different ground beetle species in the UK also eat weed seeds.
Further foraging creatures
As the sun slips behind the horizon, slugs and snails (gastropods) begin to forage. Though they often get a bad rep, when their numbers are in balance, they’re a key part of the system recycling decomposing plant matter and helping to disperse seeds. They are also food for other creatures such as garden birds.
Centipedes and millipedes (myriapods), with their elongated, segmented bodies, will also go on nighttime searches for rotting leaves, grass and veg scraps, recycling and pooping out minerals that are beneficial to the soil. As carnivorous hunters, centipedes help to keep populations of snails, spiders and soft-bodied gr
