Secret expert tip: How to attract tits to your garden this spring.

As the days grow longer and gentler, tits are urgently looking for safe places with plenty to eat - and that is exactly where your garden comes in.

If you enjoy the cheerful chatter of birds in your own garden, spring is the ideal time to do everything you can to encourage great tits and blue tits to settle in for the long term. A pretty nesting box on its own will not do the job. What matters is how “bird-friendly” the whole plot is: from dense shrubs and native planting to small hiding places in walls and masonry.

Why great tits and blue tits need a good garden right now

Spring marks the busiest and most demanding period of the year for tits. They have to find a suitable nesting site, secure a safe territory and gather enough food for themselves and, later on, their chicks. Cold snaps and an often dry April make this challenge even harder in many areas.

A garden that feels close to nature becomes a lifeline at this point. It offers shelter from cats, magpies and birds of prey, short routes between food and nest, and places to retreat when the weather turns wet, windy or hot. Once you understand that, you are no longer just designing an attractive outdoor space - you are creating habitat.

Anyone trying to attract tits should think about four essentials: a safe sleeping place, food, cover and short distances.

More than a nesting box: what tits really need

Nest boxes: useful, but often put up in the wrong way

Many amateur gardeners head to a DIY store in spring and pick up a new nest box. The idea is sound, but the results are often disappointing. Too often these boxes are hung too low, in full sun, on unstable branches or directly above heavily used patios.

For a nest box to appeal to tits, a few details matter:

• Height: ideally around 2–3 metres above ground.
• Direction: the entrance hole should face east or south-east if possible, not into strong midday sun.
• Quiet: keep it away from seating areas, play spaces and busy paths.
• Protection: do not place it where cats can easily climb up to it.
• Entrance hole size: around 28–32 mm for great tits and blue tits.

Just as important, where possible, leave natural nesting features in place, such as cracks in walls, old timber posts, gaps under roof tiles and holes in trees. Many tit species prefer these structures far more than artificial boxes.

Keeping natural nesting places instead of tidying everything away

Modern houses and manicured gardens are often too neat. Smooth façades, sealed surfaces and the absence of hollow trees all make life difficult for cavity-nesting birds. If you can, it is worth leaving:

• old fruit trees with hollows, as long as they are not at risk of collapse,
• small gaps in sheds or garage walls where birds may breed,
• parts of old walls or natural stone walls unrendered.

Every little crevice and every old tree stump can become a valuable breeding place for tits.

Tits and food: how to turn your garden into a feeding ground

Tits may be known as seed-eaters, but when it comes to feeding their young they rely mainly on a daily menu of insects, spiders and larvae. A garden full of sterile ornamental planting and a lot of gravel offers very little of that.

Native plants instead of sterile cultivated varieties

Many decorative plants sold at garden centres have been bred to flower for a long time and look attractive, but they produce very little pollen or seed. For birds, they are of little use. Native species are far better, because local insects have evolved alongside them.

Particularly useful choices include:

Plant group	Examples	Benefit for tits
Flowering perennials	meadow sage, yarrow, oxeye daisy	Attract insects; larvae become food
Native shrubs	rosehip, blackthorn, hawthorn	Provide insects, then berries and cover
Wild hedges	hazel, elder, privet	Year-round habitat for many small creatures

Try to avoid heavily double-flowered blooms wherever possible: they may look lush, but they produce very little pollen and are often inaccessible to many insects.

Skip the chemicals and ease off the lawn perfectionism

If you spray everything, you drive away aphids, caterpillars and beetles - exactly the kind of food many young tits depend on. A few nibbled leaves on roses or fruit trees are perfectly normal in a bird-friendly garden, and in fact they are welcome. They show that there is enough food around.

Another common obstacle is the immaculate showpiece lawn. Short, uniform grass areas support very little life. Better options include:

• a small wildflower meadow with clover and herbs,
• margins that are cut less often,
• a “wild corner” with nettles, leaf litter and dead stems.

Dense structure: why hedges are so valuable for tits

Many bird species, including tits, do not like open ground. They need to be able to dart into cover quickly. This is where hedges, dense shrubs and layered planting really come into their own.

The right mix in a hedge

A good hedge is made up of several native species with different flowering and fruiting times. That means food over many months and shelter in every season. Useful choices include:

• rowan
• black elder
• hornbeam
• privet
• blackthorn

Berry-bearing shrubs provide not only calories but also water, because many fruits contain a lot of moisture. That is especially helpful when puddles and small water sources dry up.

Evergreen and dense shrubs as safe cover

Evergreen species, or shrubs with very thick foliage, provide shelter throughout the year. If you include a few evergreens such as yew or holly, you create secure perches where tits can hide even in winter or during heavy rain.

A dense bush close to a nest box can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Spring feeding: what to bear in mind

Many people stop feeding birds as soon as the weather turns milder. Increasingly, experts advise continuing to offer seed food as long as there is no heatwave. Tits are happy to use the extra food, especially when they need plenty of energy for building a nest.

Keep the following points in mind:

• Clean feeding stations regularly and remove droppings.
• Do not place them directly above seating areas or play areas.
• Choose sheltered spots so cats cannot easily launch themselves at birds.
• In high summer, reduce the amount and pay close attention to hygiene to prevent disease.

More tips for a tit-friendly garden

If you want to go one step further, you can add small features that may look unremarkable at first glance but help enormously:

• Water sources: a shallow dish or a small pond, refilled with fresh water every day, provides drinking and bathing water.
• Deadwood piles: stacked logs and branches attract insects and become a food source.
• Leaf piles: do not remove every last leaf; leave some in a corner, where beetles, spiders and other small creatures can live.

It is also worth thinking about when you cut hedges and shrubs. If you prune during the nesting season, you may disturb birds that are already breeding or looking for a site. A gentler approach is to trim outside the main nesting period and leave parts of the garden untouched for longer, so birds always have somewhere safe to retreat.

If you are unsure which plants are suitable or how to keep old nesting nooks in the house safe, local wildlife groups can help. Many offer garden checks, provide lists of suitable species or advise on choosing the right nest boxes.

One often underestimated issue is light pollution. Gardens that stay lit all night, with bright floodlights, disturb nocturnal insects and therefore the food chain. Motion sensors with short illumination times are usually more than enough.

In the long run, every one of these steps pays off more than once: tits keep many pests in check, eat caterpillars from fruit trees, larvae of mosquitoes and aphids. A lively garden is therefore not only more attractive to look at, it is often easier to maintain as well - without poison and without a sterile gravel desert.