miltonkeynes

Ellie gives ideas of where best to put your bumblebee home, as well as visiting Springwatch to see how they film wildlife. Plus, surveillance footage of the wildlife that was attracted to the Milton Keynes garden after the Wild About Your Garden team worked their magic.

• Video 1 - Where to put a bumblebee home
• Video 2 - Pete visits Springwatch
• Video 3 - Surveillance

The Wild About Your Garden team are in Milton Keynes, home to the Gibbons family. Builder Pete's idea of gardening is to bring in a JCB and a blow torch. His meddling has managed to cause nigh-on irreparable damage to the family's garden, much to wife Anne's despair. Their teenage son Andrew wants wildlife but the only thing visible from the kitchen window is the family's huge dogs.

Dad Pete has to stand by as Nick Knowles and the team strip out all of his building 'projects' in order to transform this 'junkyard with rats' into a wildlife haven. Before anything can grow in this urban wasteland, garden designer Chris Beardshaw must perform a minor miracle to make the soil fertile enough to plant anything at all. Wildlife buff Ellie Harrison wants to help dangerously declining bumble and honey bee populations and offer one of our favourite garden birds a place to call home. It's a massive task but somehow even the dogs end up doing their bit to help.

Panoramic 360° Image

Explore the finished Milton Keynes garden in all its glory by dragging your way around the panoramic image below. You can also view it full screen.

The garden plan

Take a look at Chris Beardshaw's hand drawn plan for the Milton Keynes garden. Click the image to view full screen.

Bumblebees:

Bumblebees are amongst the most threatened of all bees. To provide nectar and pollen rich rewards to help boost populations of this docile creature plant trumpet and funnel shaped blooms such as Foxgloves, Penstemon and Salvia, the flowers of which have evolved to provide the perfect food stop.

Bats:

As all bat species in the UK are insect eaters, to attract them to the garden you first have to entice dusk flying insects - this is best achieved by planting night scented blooms such as Honeysuckle and Night Scented Stock. Alternatively opt for flowers in shades of blue, violet and white as these colours shine out in the low light levels of dusk so attracting the insects in search of a night feast.

Robins:

Territorial and cheeky this gardener's friend will happily clear your plants of grubs and caterpillars so to provide the ideal 'des res' plant native hedges of Field Maple, Hawthorne and Hornbeam to create dense canopies and nesting sites.

Shrubs: Aucuba japonica crotonifolia, Cornus sericea Flaviramea, Corylus maxima Red Filbert, Cotoneaster lacteus, Ilex aquifolium, Lavandula angustifolia Hidcote, Mahonia japonica Bealei, Syringa vulgaris Madame Lemoine, Viburnum davidii, Viburnum x burkwoodii Mohawk.

Perennials, Grasses and Herbs: Achillea 'Coronation Gold', Ajuga reptans Braunherz, Alchemilla mollis, Allium christophii, Anemone x hybrida Honorine Jobert, Angelica gigas, Aster x frikartii Monch, Astrantia major Claret, Brunnera macrophylla Jack Frost, Carex buchananii, Centaurea dealbata, Digitalis ferruginea gigantea, Digitalis purpurea albiflora, Echinops ritro Veitchs Blue, Epimedium x versicolor Sulphureum, Eryngium x tripartitium, Euphorbia characias Burrow Silver, Geranium Ann Folkard, Geranium pratense Mrs Kendall Clark, Geranium x magnificum, Geranium x oxonianum Wargrave Pink, Helleborus argutifolius, Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, Miscanthus sinensis, Nepeta Six Hills Giant, Papaver orientale Karine, Penstemon Apple Blossom, Perovskia Blue Spire, Persicaria bistorta Superba, Primula vulgaris, Pulmonaria Blue Ensign, Salvia nemerosa Ostfreisland, Scabiosa Butterfly Blue, Stipa gigantea, Symphytum ibericum Wisley Blue, Thymus vulgaris Silver Posie, Verbena bonariensis.

Climbers: Clematis montana Rubens Superba, Jasminum officinale, Lonicera japonica Halliana, Lonicera periclymenum Belgica, Trachelospermum jasminioides, Wisteria sinensis.

For more on plants go to BBC Gardening's Plant Finder Database.