Why Winter Work Pays Off in Spring

A garden that hums with bees in June is not an accident. It is usually the result of a few quiet jobs done in the coldest, least glamorous weeks of the year. On a smallholding, where the veg patch, the orchard and the hedgerows all lean on one another, winter is when you set the table for everything that follows.

Bare-root plants are only available now. Birds are at their hungriest and most visible. Seed heads that look scruffy in January are larders for the creatures that will pollinate your broad beans and squash come spring. Give the garden an hour or two on a dry, frosty day and you will be repaid many times over.

Feed the Birds Properly, Not Just Plentifully

Feeding the birds is the easiest winter job, and the one most often done slightly wrong. A few specifics make a real difference to the health of your garden's resident population.

• Mix it up. Black sunflower seeds and sunflower hearts suit tits, finches and nuthatches. Nyjer draws goldfinches. Fat balls and suet blocks carry small birds through hard frosts, but remove the mesh nets, which can tangle legs and beaks.
• Hygiene matters more than quantity. Wash feeders every fortnight in hot, soapy water, rinse well and let them dry fully before refilling. Damp, mouldy seed spreads disease and can kill the very birds you are trying to help.
• Nothing salty, no mouldy bread, never milk. Cooked rice, dry bread and salty scraps do more harm than good. Fresh water in a shallow dish is the single most valuable thing you can offer during a freeze.
• Keep feeders clear of cat ambush points — a metre or two away from dense shrub cover, but close enough for a quick dash to safety.

Leave the ivy on walls and fence posts if you can. Its late flowers and black berries are a lifeline in lean weeks, and the dense growth shelters wrens and sparrows.

Plant Bare-Root Hedging While the Ground Is Open

From November to March, whenever the soil is neither frozen nor waterlogged, you can plant bare-root hedging at a fraction of the cost of pot-grown plants. Native mixes establish fast and quickly become a windbreak, a corridor for wildlife and a source of sloes, haws and nuts.

• A good smallholding blend: hawthorn and blackthorn as the backbone, with hazel, field maple, dogwood, guelder rose and spindle for colour and berries.
• Plant in a double, staggered row about 35cm apart, roughly five plants per metre for a thick, stock-proof hedge.
• Firm them in properly. Tread the soil around each root, mulch with well-rotted manure or bark, and fit spiral guards against rabbits and voles.
• Water in dry spells through the first spring and summer. After that, most native hedging looks after itself.

Once established, avoid cutting between March and August — that is peak nesting season, and there is nothing sadder than a trimmed-out robin's nest. If you must trim, do it in late winter before the sap rises.

Leave the Seed Heads Standing

Resist the urge to cut everything down in a fit of January tidiness. Standing seed heads feed goldfinches, bullfinches and siskins, and hollow stems shelter overwintering ladybirds and solitary bees.

Good plants to leave alone until late February or March include teasel, globe thistle, eryngium, sedum, echinacea, verbena, cardoon and sunflowers. Cut them in stages rather than all at once, so birds have a gradual supply, and simply lay the stems in a corner pile rather than burning them. Anything with a hollow or pithy stem is worth keeping — the bees that emerge from them in spring will pollinate your fruit trees for free.

Water, Shelter and the Small Creatures

Ponds are the most underrated wildlife feature on any smallholding, and winter is when they need a light touch rather than a tidy-up.

• If the surface freezes, melt a hole by resting a saucepan of hot water on the ice. Never smash it — the shock waves can kill frogs and newts resting in the silt below.
• Leave a pile of leaves and logs in a quiet corner for hedgehogs, beetles, toads and slow worms. A sheet of corrugated tin over the top makes an excellent refuge.
• Keep a shallow dish of water at ground level and check it daily in hard frosts.
• Delay cutting back old herbaceous growth near the pond until the risk of sharp frost has passed.

Planning for a Productive Spring

While you are out there with the barrow, think ahead. Note which shrubs fed the birds best, which corners stayed waterlogged, and where you could squeeze in another fruiting hedge or a clump of native wildflowers. Order bare-root fruit trees and whips early, before the best varieties sell out.

Winter wildlife work is rarely dramatic. It is a handful of seeds, a row of whips and a little deliberate untidiness. But by the time the first queen bumblebee wakes and the blackbirds start nesting, your garden will already be working for itself — and the harvest will show it.