The woodland floor is a surprisingly rich habitat where fungi and a host of small animals break down and recycle the dead wood and leaves. Without these vital organisms, the human race would have been buried under a mountain of dead wood long ago: in fact, we would probably never have evolved.
It is quite easy to create a replica of the woodland floor to house some of these fascinating creatures in a shady corner of your garden. All you need is a few logs stacked up with plenty of gaps between them, but you can make a more attractive feature by surrounding the stack with a bed of wood or bark chippings. Spray the logs occasionally with water in dry weather, because the resident plants and animals do not like to get too dry.
CONSERVATION TIP
Do not construct your log garden close to old or valuable trees. Honey fungus may well invade the logs and it could spread to living trees. Although it rarely harms young, healthy trees, older specimens are sometimes killed by the fungus.
Dead wood in the forest is the natural home of the furniture beetle (woodworm) and other timber pests, and these insects are among the first to attack your logs. As the timber softens, they may be followed by stag beetles and the much more common lesser stag beetles, whose fat, juicy grubs tunnel through the timber for several years. Endomychus coccineus is a ladybird look-alike that feeds on fungal threads under the bark. Woodlice and millipedes live under loose bark and eat the timber softened by the fungi. Centipedes, spiders and ground beetles hunt in and around the logs, and many other invertebrates find their food and shelter there. Don’t be afraid to lift a log occasionally to see what is lurking beneath.
Michael Chinery
The antlers of the male stag beetle are much enlarged jaws and they are used to fight over the females.
Michael Chinery
The latter have much smaller jaws and look more like the lesser stag beetle, although they are not as black.
Wrens love to hunt insects and spiders in the log garden, while hedgehogs, mice and voles often make their homes there. Little piles of grain and other fruits or seeds hidden among the logs are sure signs that mice or voles are in residence.
Michael Chinery
Toadstools most often appear on logs in the autumn. A cluster like this can scatter millions of spores, but very few will reach a suitable spot in which to grow.
GARDEN PROJECT – CREATING A LOG GARDEN
Use logs of varying thicknesses in your log garden, and try to get wood of several different species – oak, beech, ash, elm and pine, for example. This will increase the variety of insects and other creatures attracted to it, and you can then watch the gradual disintegration of the timber over several years as a succession of fungi and other organisms move in.
Mosses and lichens may already be growing on the bark when you get the logs. Although they don’t do much towards breaking down the timber, they do act as nurseries for ferns and other plants whose roots get under the bark and open the way for animal life.
The toadstools and bracket fungi that may sprout from the logs are just the reproductive parts that scatter the spores. Most of the fungus consists of hair-like threads which spread through the timber and soften it by exuding digestive juices. Some species attack solid timber soon after it has fallen, but others prefer to wait until it has been softened by the earlier invaders.
It is a good idea to add fresh logs and wood chips to your log garden from time to time so that you always have timber in various stages of decay. The completely rotted material can then be spread on the rest of your garden.
Michael Chinery
When building your log garden, don’t forget to leave a few gaps for the mice and hedgehogs to get in. Solitary bees and wasps (see here) are quite likely to tunnel into the softer logs.