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The Langdyke Countryside Trust - which owns and manages seven nature reserves in the area - is launching a campaign to create a community nature reserve.

The Langdyke Community Nature Reserve - the trust’s eighth - will be made up from a whole range of established and newly created wildlife gardening plots which could include yours.

The aim of the project is to bring people together across the local community to promote wildlife-friendly gardening and to give nature a chance to recover.

People in the Peterborough area are being encouraged to get involved in a new wildlife gardening scheme. Photo: Sarah Lambert

Organisers aim to share good practice and celebrate successes and make it easy for anyone to get involved.

Participants do not even need a garden as they can instead install a window box or put up a bird table.

Examples of benefiting nature could be letting the grass grow in one area, putting up a bird box, planting some nature-friendly plants or leaving a pile of wood for hedgehogs and other wildlife to live in.

The gardening scheme is part of Langdyke’s overall project to create a vision for nature across the area it calls John Clare Countryside - particularly the villages between Peterborough and Stamford.

The peasant poet John Clare, who lived in Helpston, trudged the countryside and wrote about it in many of his poems.

To create a wildlife friendly area, residents have to measure an area (it may be there already or you have plans to create it), then they can visit the Langdyke website and pledge it as a little piece of the eighth reserve.

There is no cost and your garden will still be your own.

Further information can be found at: https://langdyke.org.uk/the-eighth-reserve/ where you can also view a video explaining more about the scheme, as well as pledge your support.

Top tips:

. When buying plants from a garden centre try and purchase wildlife friendly ones

. Save the leaves in the autumn and pile them up in sheltered areas to create habitats

. Let the grass grow

. Feed the birds

. Install a bird table or bird box

. Don’t cut back hedges or trees in the bird nesting season

. Keep a lookout for hedgehogs and make sure they can get in and out of your garden

. Create a wildlife pond.

Campaign to create community nature reserve in Peterborough... from comfort of your garden