Welcome to the Coronation Gardens for Food and Nature initiative, which aims to get us all growing food alongside nature. It’s a completely brilliant idea and one I fully endorse – in my view there’s nothing better than growing food while providing for wildlife.

Growing your own food is rewarding and fun, and doing it in a nature-friendly way means there’s always plenty to discover when you’re outside tending your patch. Whatever you have room for – a pond, a patch of nettles, a pot of nectar-rich flowers, areas of long grass or a mixed native hedge – the wildlife will find the habitats you’ve created and will work with you to keep your plot healthy and productive.

It's lots of fun, too. I like to think of my allotment as “part wild”. There’s plenty of room for wildlife to live, with habitats including patches of long grass and “weeds”, a pond, bee-friendly flowers, and log piles. It’s not always plain sailing: my crops have their fair share of slug and snail damage and I do have to share my berries with the blackbirds. Then there was the year I couldn’t use my bamboo canes because they’d been taken over by leafcutter bees! But I’m happy to share my space, food and even climbing bean frames with such a wonderful array of species. Imagine growing food without them? It would be so lonely.

If you’re new to growing fruit and veg then start with easy crops like Mediterranean herbs, courgettes, beans, strawberries and potatoes. You can grow them in pots (or a potato bag) if you have a balcony or small garden, just make sure you use a weekly liquid feed when watering, as the compost will quickly run out of nutrients. Then consider wildlife habitats you want to create. How about flowers to attract bees? A bird bath for birds? Nettles for butterflies? You could even lay a piece of corrugated iron over grass to provide a basking spot for slow worms – their favourite food is slugs. See how wildlife likes to eat each other? The more species you attract, the less you will ever need to mention the word “pest”.

Tips for success
It's easy to get bogged down in the do’s and don’ts of fruit and veg growing, but here are some simple tips we should all remember:

Feed the soil by composting your kitchen and plant waste and laying it on the surface of the soil (known as mulching) once a year.

Conserve water by watering in the evening, and never when it’s hot and sunny. Use water butts to save rainwater rather than rely on mains supplies.

Use companion plants to solve problems rather than chemicals – did you know planting carrots with garlic deters insects from laying eggs in them? Or that nasturtiums can be used as a sacrificial crop to save your brassicas from cabbage white butterflies?

Grow more than what you need, in case you lose plants to slugs and snails, birds or even squirrels. Sharing your crop is easier when there’s lots to go around, and having a supply of spares is the easiest way to get over the loss of plants that have been eaten.

Lastly, don’t forget to enjoy your moments with nature – take time to watch bumblebees “buzz pollinate” your tomatoes, notice sparrows taking aphids off your broad beans, and check under leaves for eggs of things like shield bugs, ladybirds and moths. I think wildlife gardening and growing food are two of the most joyful ways we can spend time outside. What’s good for our environment is good for us – let’s all see what food we can grow this year, and who we can share our growing space with.