Landscape Wildlife and Habitat Questions Checklist

Write down which birds, mammals, amphibians and insects you have actually seen in the garden, and where you saw them rather than only that they were present.

Location matters more than the list. A specialist asks where activity was seen so it can be tied to a hedge, wall, pond or tree that the design may affect.

Note the parts of the day when you notice most activity, including dusk movement such as bats emerging or foxes crossing, which a daytime site visit will never see.

Site visits usually happen in working hours, so the dusk and dawn observations you already hold may be the only evidence available when the design is drawn.

Bats, roosts and nesting birds are covered by protections that vary by location — treat any suspected roost as a question for a qualified ecologist and the relevant governing body.

Record which parts of the plot you rarely disturb, such as behind a shed or under a decking edge, because quiet corners are where nesting and hibernation are most likely.

Owners tend to describe the parts of the garden they use. The neglected corners usually carry the habitat value and are the first thing a redesign clears.

Keep dated photographs of anything you notice, including holes, droppings, feathers or worn animal paths, so observations can be discussed rather than recalled.

Dated photographs give a designer or ecologist something concrete to work from, and they show whether activity was recent or a long while ago.

Ask household members and anyone who mows or maintains the garden what they have seen, since they routinely notice activity that the rest of the household does not.

The person cutting grass or clearing leaves is often the first to find a nest, a burrow entrance or a slow worm under a sheet of material.

Note whether any activity you have seen appears seasonal, such as a hedge being busy at one point and completely quiet at another.

Seasonal patterns change what a single survey visit can find, and recording them helps a specialist judge what their visit may have missed.

Mark on a rough sketch every mature tree, hedge line, ivy-covered wall and dense shrub group, including the ones you consider untidy and intend to remove.

The features most likely to be cleared are usually the ones carrying most habitat value, so they need to be on the drawing rather than assumed away.

Note any tree with visible holes, splits, loose bark or dense ivy, and treat what you have seen as a question to raise rather than a removal decision to make.

Cavities and loose bark are what specialists look for first, so recording them early means the question is raised before the scope assumes the tree has gone.

Whether a tree can be pruned or removed may depend on protections, boundary ownership and local designations — confirm with a qualified arboriculturist and your local authority.

Write down where log piles, stone piles, compost heaps and old sheds sit, since these are common shelter and hibernation features in a domestic garden.

They are easy to relocate deliberately during a project and easy to lose by accident, so knowing where they are lets the design keep or replace them on purpose.

Record which boundary is a living hedge and which is a fence or wall, and note where any hedge is thin, gappy or has recently been cut hard.

A hedge and a fence behave very differently for wildlife, and the condition of a hedge affects whether it can be retained, reinforced or needs replanting.

Note any ground you have never dug or cultivated, along with rough grass that is cut infrequently or left long through part of the season.

Long-undisturbed ground and rough grass often hold more than cultivated beds, and both are easily lost to levelling or turfing without anyone noticing the trade.

List the habitat features you would genuinely be willing to keep and the ones you are not, so the trade-offs are explicit rather than discovered on site.

Being honest early about what you want gone avoids a design built around retention that is then stripped out once the works are under way.

Note where water sits after heavy rain and whether the same spots reappear in every wet spell, rather than treating a single wet patch as a one-off.

Repeatedly wet ground is both habitat and design constraint, and a designer will want to know it exists before beds, lawns or hard surfaces are placed over it.

Record any pond, water butt, ditch, stream or drainage channel on or beside the plot, including ones in neighbouring gardens close to your boundary.

Amphibians move between water and shelter across boundaries, so a neighbouring pond can matter to your project even though it sits on other land.

Altering drainage, ditches or watercourses is a professional and often regulated matter — raise any change to how water leaves the site with a qualified drainage professional and the relevant governing body.

Write down whether frogs, toads or newts have been seen on the plot, and where they were found rather than only that somebody once saw one.

Where an amphibian was found tells a specialist which shelter it was using, which is frequently a wall base, compost heap or damp paving edge rather than the water.

Note whether an existing pond is intended to stay, be moved, be reshaped or be filled, and flag filling as a question to ask rather than a decision to take.

Pond removal is often assumed to be trivial, yet it is one of the changes most likely to need a specialist opinion before it enters a scope.

Filling or reshaping a pond can affect protected species and how water leaves the site — put it to a qualified ecologist and your local authority before it is scoped.

Record where downpipes, gullies and overflow points discharge, and whether that discharge is what keeps a particular area permanently damp.

Damp created by rainwater discharge behaves differently from natural damp, and the answer may sit with drainage rather than with planting.

Note whether the damp areas you have identified are ones you would accept keeping as they are, since some planting approaches suit wet ground rather than fighting it.

Deciding early that a damp corner can stay damp changes the brief considerably and often removes a difficult problem from the scope altogether.

Note where there are existing gaps under fences, through hedges or beneath gates, and whether the proposed boundary work would close them.

Ground-level gaps are the main way small mammals move between gardens, and they are usually closed by accident during a fence replacement rather than on purpose.

Look for worn paths through grass, flattened runs under hedges and repeated gaps in planting, and mark what you find on your sketch.

Worn routes are the clearest owner-observable evidence of regular movement, and they can be seen without any specialist knowledge at all.

Ask neighbours whether they see the same animals, and whether they have boundary changes of their own in mind.

Routes are shared, so a neighbour replacing a hedge with a solid fence changes what your own design can achieve regardless of what you do on your side.

Record which boundaries you believe you own or maintain, and treat ownership as something to confirm from your title documents rather than from local custom.

Almost every boundary disagreement starts with an assumption about ownership that was never checked against the paperwork.

Boundary ownership, shared responsibility and rights over a boundary are legal questions — settle them from your title documents and with a suitably qualified adviser before work is agreed.

Note whether any hedge or tree sits on a boundary and is effectively shared, and whether cutting or removing it would affect the neighbouring side.

Shared boundary planting usually cannot be treated as yours alone, and that conversation is far easier before a contractor is standing on site.

Write down whether you would accept deliberate ground-level gaps in a new boundary, so the designer can allow for them from the start.

Keeping movement routes is straightforward to design in and awkward to retrofit once panels, gravel boards and foundations are set.

Ask your local authority whether the site or any tree on it sits within a designation that affects what may be cleared or altered.

Designations attach to places rather than to owners, and they are frequently discovered only after a contractor has already been booked.

Designations, protections and consents differ by location and change over time — treat the local authority as the source rather than any general description.

Ask whether an ecological survey is expected for a project of this kind in your area, and what such a survey would need from you beforehand.

Knowing early whether a survey is expected changes the order of decisions, because some surveys can only be carried out at certain points in the season.

Write down anything you have observed that might prompt a specialist question, such as suspected bat activity, a nesting site or a burrow, and pass it on rather than judging it.

Owners are well placed to observe and badly placed to identify, so raw observations are far more useful than an amateur conclusion about what they mean.

Ask a qualified ecologist what they would want from you before their visit, and whether the season limits what they can realistically find.

Findings depend heavily on when a visit happens, so asking about seasonal limits prevents a report that quietly says very little about the site.

Confirm locally whether hedge, tree or vegetation removal is restricted at particular points in the season on sites like yours.

Restrictions on clearance are common and location-specific, and they usually govern the order of work rather than whether it can happen at all.

Do not treat any general statement about clearance seasons as applying to your site — confirm what applies with your local authority and a qualified ecologist.

Keep a written note of who told you what and when, including which department or specialist you spoke to and what you asked them.

Advice given by phone is easily misremembered, and a dated note of the conversation is what lets a designer act on it with any confidence.

Go through the proposed layout and list every existing feature it would remove, including hedges, rough grass, ivy and old structures.

Designs show what will be there afterwards, so a separate list of what disappears exposes losses the drawing never mentions.

Ask what is proposed to replace each removed feature, and whether the replacement performs a similar role or only looks broadly similar.

A clipped evergreen screen and a mixed native hedge can read the same on a plan and behave completely differently for whatever was using the original.

Note how much of the plot would become sealed surface once paving, decking and bases are added together, and whether soft ground is being lost where you had not noticed.

Hard surfaces accumulate across a design, and the cumulative loss of open soil is rarely discussed as a single decision by anyone.

How surface water behaves once ground is sealed is a drainage design matter for a qualified professional, with local requirements confirmed through your local authority.

Decide and record whether existing mature planting is worth designing around, even where that constrains the layout you would otherwise prefer.

Mature planting cannot be bought back, so the decision to keep it has to be made before levels and hard surfaces are set around it.

Ask whether any proposed clearance could be staged so that habitat is not removed from the whole plot in one operation.

Staged clearance gives displaced wildlife somewhere to move to, and it is much easier to agree before a single clearance visit is written into the scope.

Write down which habitat features you would want reinstated after the works, so they appear in the written scope rather than only in a conversation.

Reinstatement that was only discussed verbally is the first thing to disappear once the site gets busy and attention moves elsewhere.

Note where outdoor light currently spills into planting, boundaries and any water, including light arriving from neighbouring properties.

Existing spill is the baseline, and a designer cannot judge what new lighting adds without knowing what the site already receives after dark.

Decide and record which areas genuinely need light after dark and which are being lit only because lighting was assumed from the start.

Telling necessary lighting apart from decorative lighting narrows the discussion enormously, and it is a decision only the household can make.

Ask a suitably qualified electrician what outdoor lighting and power would involve on this site, and treat the answer as the starting point for the design.

Cable routes, supply arrangements and switching often dictate where lights can realistically go, which shapes the design rather than following it.

Outdoor electrical work is a professional and often regulated matter that must be discussed with a suitably qualified electrician and confirmed against local requirements.

Discuss with the designer whether lighting can be aimed away from hedges, boundaries and water, and whether it needs to run for the whole time it is dark.

Direction and control are easier to change at design stage than fittings are, and they carry most of the effect on nearby habitat.

Note where construction access, storage and machinery would sit during the works, and which habitat features would be immediately next to that activity.

Disturbance during the works is often greater than anything the finished scheme causes, and the storage area gets chosen on site unless it is planned.

Record whether any part of the garden appears to be used by wildlife at a particular point in the season, so disturbance questions can be put to the specialist.

Questions about when work should happen belong with an ecologist, but they can only be asked if the owner has flagged that seasonal use exists.

Agree in writing who maintains new hedging, wildflower areas and water features after handover, and what that maintenance actually involves in practice.

Habitat planting fails more often through the wrong maintenance than the wrong selection, and whoever cuts it needs to understand the intent.

Ask what the new planting will look like while it establishes, so the untidy stage is expected rather than treated as something that has gone wrong.

Native and habitat planting often looks sparse before it works, and that appearance triggers premature replacement or hard cutting back.

Decide and record whether any part of the garden will be left deliberately uncut, and mark it clearly so it is not tidied away by mistake.

Deliberately rough areas are indistinguishable from neglect to anyone who was not part of the conversation, including any future maintenance visit.

Note whether any habitat feature needs attention at a particular point in the season, and write down who is expected to notice that it is due.

Responsibility for noticing is different from responsibility for doing, and it is the part most often left unassigned at handover.

Ask what watering the new planting will need while it establishes, and whether any outdoor water supply forms part of the scope.

Establishment watering is a common gap between the landscape scope and the household, and it decides whether planting survives its first dry spell.

Any new outdoor water supply or irrigation provision should be designed and installed by suitably qualified people and confirmed against local requirements.

Write down what you would want a handover note to say about the habitat features, so the knowledge does not leave the site with the contractor.

Site knowledge sits with the people who built it and is lost at handover unless somebody has asked for it in writing beforehand.