Five things you didn’t know about… your garden

  • A Ladybird up close

    1. Worms are hard workers

    Earthworms are among Ireland’s greatest gardeners. There can be as many as five million of them under an area the size of the pitch of Croke Park.

    Charles Darwin found that this number of worms could bury a football pitch in 15 tonnes of soil a year from the casts they leave on the surface.

    2. Gardening peat is running out

    Peat used in gardening comes from raised bogs. Ireland now has less than 20,000 hectares of wildlife-rich raised bog, from an original area of some 337,000 hectares.

    The greatest destruction took place over the past half a century, due to turf cutting for milled peat and moss peat extraction. If you are buying compost in your garden, think about the future of our bogs and look out for the peat-free alternatives.

    3. Rats are big – but not that big

    It is commonly claimed that there is at least one rat for every person in our major towns and cities, but scientists say there are no reliable figures. And wildlife experts believe it is not just the numbers which are exaggerated. Rats as big as dogs are wandering our city streets, if urban myths are to be believed.

    But the average body length of the brown rat, the most common in Ireland, is just four to eight inches, and its tail is often shorter than that of a mouse.

    4. Robins were first ringed in Fermanagh

    The secrets of the robin’s lifestyle were first unlocked by the pioneering ornithologist J.P. Burkitt in Co Fermanagh in the 1920s. His claim to fame is that he invented the technique known as colour ringing.

    Burkitt would attach metal rings to the legs of robins to study them individually in the field. Ironically, he was colour-blind, so he had to use rings with unique shapes rather than colours.

    5. Bats are friendly

    Ireland is currently home to nine species of bat, and if you find bats in your garden, remember that they are totally harmless, and much smaller than people usually imagine. While bats have a bloodthirsty reputation, scientists who study them say they are very friendly creatures and have had “very bad press”.

  • Learn more

    Read about a young UCD researcher’s award-winning work about bats.