Encouraging Wildlife into Your Garden with Colour
Whether you have a back or front garden, acres or a terrace, you can entice critters of all sizes to pay you a visit. What do I need? A paintbrush. Animals are attracted to various colours for different reasons and painting any of your external doors a certain colour can help your outdoor spaces become the place to be for creatures great and small.
Attracting Butterflies to Your Garden
From Red Admirals to Chalkhill Blues, butterflies are one of the most popular insects in the UK. Whilst these winged beauties come in a variety of hues, there are only certain colours that attract them.
Butterflies are constantly on the hunt for nectar and their eyes fixate on bright colours such as red, yellow, orange, pink and purple. A bold choice for your external door, but it will pay dividends in the summer. Just make sure you have some of their favourite plants nearby so they don’t feel hard done by. Opt for Coneflower, Verbena or Lantana.
Haven for Hedgehogs
Few of us have yet to glimpse a hedgehog in our garden but there is a way to make your space as attractive to them as possible. Although hedgehogs have terrible eyesight, there is nothing they love more than ever-green shrubbery and bushes. Often dark green in colour, the prickly creatures can suss out the dense ever-greens from open spaces and use them as a place to hunker down. Go for a forest green hue for your garden door and make sure there is plenty of lush vegetation for the nocturnal wanderer to know that it is a safe haven.
Best Colours to Attract Birds
Short of feeders and baths, backyard cultivators can bring in flocks by taking advantage of birds’ superior sense of colour. Birds naturally rely on colour clues in their day to day lives, such as the bright plumage of a strong suitor to mate or for indicating predators.
Due to being so attuned to colour, painting your external door can help birds visit your garden. But, which birds are attracted to what colours?
Earth Tones: doves and thrushes
Orange: orioles, finches
Yellow: bee-eaters (very rare), tits
Blue: jays and swifts
The one colour to avoid when painting your door to attract birds of all species is white. To our garden friends white is a signal of aggression and danger. Many birds have a white section of plumage to warn off predators and your white door might well ward them off too.
Bring in the Bumblebees
For nearly 10 years, the number of bumblebees in the UK has been declining rapidly. If this continues, experts predict that the British countryside will decay and indigenous plants will die due to the lack of pollination from the bees.
To do your bit for the environment and encourage bumblebees to visit the plants in your garden, why not paint your front door one of their favourite shades? Purple, blue and yellow are the most attractive colours to bumblebees, which actually all appear as different shades of blue in a bee’s eyes. Many people assume that reds and oranges would be the colours to go for, but these show as green to bees, and they aren’t fussed by foliage!