Paul Hopkins: Protect life in the long grass of your garden

That's a grand stretch in it, alright. And there will be even grander stretches, given the clocks spring forward this weekend and all subjects will have an extra hour of light thrown on them. And increasingly so, until the latest sunset will be 21.58 on 22nd June.

When I was younger and fitter back in the day, the extra light and touch of spring had me out ridding the garden of the debris of danker days. I was not the committed gardener by any stretch but I got the job done. As I got older and the children old enough to manage themselves, their mother, much younger and more agile, would tend to the matter.

Now, proper-fit is Donna and a qualified landscaper and she looks after the gardens and does a far better job than I ever could. I just sit in the spring sunshine and admire her skills and inhale the smell of mown grass and the dancing daffodils. A nice chardonnay to hand.

Since climate change became the buzzword, there has been a growing debate that we 'overdo' the maintenance and manicure of our gardens. And that such freneticism is killing off the wonderful beings that are the bugs and critters that dwell within.

Talking on the radio, Collie Ennis, zoologist and biodiversity officer at Trinity College Dublin, says it is imperative we make space for nature while enjoying our gardens. The work carried out by bugs keeps our greenery healthy. "They are essential, without them you won’t have a garden. They are essential for fertilisation and for breaking down waste matter. They are essential for everything and they exist because they have evolved over millions of years,” he says.

My erstwhile newspaper colleague Marianne Heron is an enthusiastic gardener and a big supporter of Collie Ennis. "We tend to overlook some of that [garden] life that includes the myriad tiny creatures that hang out in our gardens going quietly about their business, most of their work really useful, " she tells me. "They may be small but can be totally fascinating. Do you know that earwigs are fantastic mothers, building secure nests and guarding their young from predators, or that during the 'marriage flight' of ants, worker ants clear a runway in order to confuse predators so that the maximum number of females can take off for their weddings.

"Most unlikely are the spectacular nocturnal mating habits of leopard slugs, which, when entwined in a hermaphrodite embrace on hanging twigs, emit a glistening orb which lights up like a chandelier. Don’t worry though, they eat other slugs and decayed matter, not your seedlings," she says.

When did you last see a ladybird or a hedgehog? Gardening overkill is driving them out of their abodes.

And what of the humble bee? They don't just make honey (so vital to food supply). Bees provide important pollination services, but many bee species are suffering significant population declines worldwide.

The western bumble bee population has decreased by 93 per cent in the last two decades. Factors that contribute to such decline include habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, pests and pathogens, and poor nutrition – because the nitwits they eat are vanishing too. Landscaping your garden could be optimised for bees by providing shelter and nesting sites, an abundance of spring-through-autumn pollinator-friendly flowers, and protection from pesticides. Go Google, go figure. Save lives – for bees provide an important service by contributing to the pollination of our crops.

And don't over-weed. One man's weed is another critter's nourishment. Some plants considered weeds are important for wildlife. Nettles provide food for about 40 species of insects including butterflies. while dandelions provide early nectar for bumblebees.

My late father's pride and joy was his garden hedge, which offered some illusion of privacy in our terraced house. He would meticulously attend to it, with his shears to hand, drill coat on his broad shoulders and peaked cap on head. Whistling Al Jolson's Mammy, he would religiously ran the palm of his hand across the top of the hedge and stand back a bit to ensure its evenness and fine pruning.

When he survived his second heart attack in as many months, his cardiologist advised him – given my father was 80 – to slow down on his cycling everywhere for miles, and swimming off the Bull Wall every other day.

The third heart attack got him. "So sad,"said a condoling neighbour. "Only saw him out yesterday doing the hedge."

That feckin' hedge killed my father...