One of the best ways of encouraging wildlife to your garden is by constructing a pond. It does not have to be a large expanse of water, even a small pond will attract several species of insects and birds and animals.
It’s important to have a shallow, boggy area around the edge of your pond to encourage amphibians like frogs which require both water and land to survive. Water beetles and dragonflies also like shallow, muddy areas for part of their life cycles. Dragonflies lay their eggs in the water, but once the nymphs are fully grown, they need plant life on dryer land to hang on to before transforming into young dragonflies.
Ensure you have plants growing around the edge of your pond to create enough cover for frogs to hide from predators. As ponds also attract insects, you should find that these in turn will encourage blue tits and sparrows to your garden. The poor hedgehog has declined in numbers drastically over the last 30 years but you may find that a pond may also attract this little animal to come along for a drink. Hedgehogs are able to swim but they do need a means of getting out of pond once they are in, so make sure you provide a ramp of some sort or place rocks which they can clamber over to prevent them from tiring and drowning.