Daniel Ashworth
Why Dead Wood Deserves a Corner of the Garden
Most of us are brought up to tidy. Fallen branches get burnt, logs go on the fire or to the tip, and the garden ends up orderly and rather lifeless. Yet in woods and hedgerows that have never been tidied, decaying timber is one of the busiest places you will find. Thousands of British species — beetles, fungi, mosses, centipedes, and more — depend on dead wood at some point in their lives, and it has become scarce simply because we keep clearing it away.
A log pile is one of the cheapest habitats you can make, and once it is built it asks almost nothing of you. Stacked properly, in the right spot, it becomes damp, dark, crumbly and irresistible.
Choosing the Spot: Shade, Damp and Soil Contact
Position matters far more than size. A pile that bakes in full sun will dry out and stay empty. Aim for dappled or full shade, ideally on a north or east-facing boundary, beneath a hedge, or at the back of a shrub border. Overhanging branches are a bonus: autumn leaves settle on the pile and keep the surface cool and moist right through summer.
Ground contact is essential. Rest the logs directly on soil, or on a thin scattering of leaf mould, so moisture is drawn up from below. Never sit a pile on paving slabs, gravel or plastic sheeting — you will simply create a dry stack of timber that lasts for years without anything choosing to live in it.
If you have a pond, so much the better. Frogs, toads and newts will use a log pile within a few metres of water as somewhere to shelter on hot days and to hibernate come the cold. A quiet corner away from the back door, the trampoline and the lawnmower is ideal.
What to Stack, and What to Leave Out
- Untreated broadleaf timber. Oak, beech, ash, apple, hawthorn, field maple and willow all rot down beautifully. A mix of species gives you a mix of colonisers.
- Bark left on. Many beetles lay their eggs under loose bark, and the bark itself holds moisture.
- A range of sizes. Thick logs from 10cm to 30cm across for slow, long-term decay, plus thinner branches and trimmings that crumble within a season or two.
- Loose fill. Leaf litter, twigs and a few handfuls of damp soil tucked into the gaps help everything settle in faster.
Leave out treated, painted or varnished timber, old fence panels, decking offcuts and anything with nails or screws in it. Rough-sawn offcuts from a sawmill or a friendly tree surgeon are perfect; ask for a mixed bag of native species and you will get far more for your money than any bag of logs from a garage forecourt.
Building the Pile: Layers, Gaps and Buried Logs
The classic method is a simple stack, two or three logs high, with successive layers laid crosswise so that air and damp can move through the gaps without the whole thing drying out. Keep it low — knee height at most. A towering heap sheds water and stays cold and dry in the middle, whereas a shallow, wide pile holds humidity where it counts.
For amphibians, one refinement is worth the effort. Bury a few logs upright in the soil, roughly a third of their length below ground and the rest standing proud, like short fence posts. The buried ends stay permanently damp and the exposed end grain rots into soft, spongy wood that beetles adore. Ring a few with moss and leaf mould as you firm them in.
Finish with a loose scattering of leaves over the top and let one side spill open onto the soil, so that anything small can simply walk in.
What Will Move In, and When
Expect very little in the first season — decay is slow, and patience is part of the pleasure. Within a year you should see woodlice, millipedes, centipedes, slugs, ground beetles and the first threadlike fungal growths creeping along the undersides of the logs. By the second and third years the pile comes into its own: beetle larvae tunnelling through the softer wood, spiders and earwigs in the crevices, and fruiting bodies pushing up in damp autumn weather — candle snuff fungus, stag's horn fungus, sulphur tuft and, if you are lucky, the strange dead man's fingers.
Frogs and toads will use the damp base as a summer refuge and a winter bed. Smooth and palmate newts often join them. Slow-worms love the warmth of a log that has caught the afternoon sun, and if there is leaf litter around the edges, a hedgehog may nest there. Shrews and voles will hunt through the gaps, and wrens, robins and song thrushes will probe the pile for insects all winter.
Looking After It Without Disturbing It
The main job is to leave it alone. Amphibians and many insects hibernate in log piles from around October to March, so never move, rebuild or tidy the pile during that window — and do not site it somewhere you will need to shift it in a year or two.
Above all, never let it become a bonfire. A pile that sits quietly for three years is exactly the sort of thing someone looks at on a crisp autumn afternoon with a box of matches, and everything inside dies with it. Keep the fire pit well away and make sure everybody in the household knows why.
Top the pile up as it settles, adding new logs around the edges rather than rebuilding the centre, and let the oldest wood stay put until it has crumbled to nothing. A log pile is a slow feature, and that is its charm: you build it once, then watch it darken, soften and quietly fill with life.
