An orchard that hums, flutters and chirrups is usually an orchard in good health. Birds and predatory insects are the cheapest pest control you will ever employ, and they work shifts around the clock — blue tits stripping codling moth larvae from bark by day, ground beetles patrolling the leaf litter by night. The trick is not to import these helpers but to make your plot irresistible to the ones already living nearby.

Build a hedgerow before you build a spray regime

If you do only one thing, plant or restore a mixed native hedge along one boundary. A hedge is a larder, a nursery and a winter shelter rolled into one, and it will bring in far more wildlife than any number of scattered feeders.

Aim for a mix rather than a monoculture. Hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, field maple, dog rose, guelder rose and holly all earn their place. Include something that fruits late — crab apple, elder or ivy allowed to scramble — so there is food when autumn turns hard. Plant bare-root whips between November and March, two or three rows deep at 45cm spacings if you have the room, and cut the hedge on a three-year rotation rather than trimming it flat every summer. That way some sections always carry flowers and berries.

Hoverflies, lacewings and parasitic wasps all need nectar and pollen as adults even when their larvae are busy eating aphids. Umbellifers are the stars here: cow parsley, fennel, dill and yarrow. Let a few self-seed along the hedge base and between the trees, and you will see far more hoverflies hovering over the blossom in May.

Nest boxes, placed with a bit of thought

Blue tits and great tits are voracious caterpillar hunters, and a single brood can account for thousands of larvae in a season. Put up boxes with a 32mm entrance hole for blue tits and 25mm for coal tits, and site them two to four metres up, facing between north and east so they do not bake in afternoon sun.

• Fix boxes firmly so they do not sway, but leave them accessible for cleaning each autumn.
• Space them at least ten metres apart — tits are territorial and will not tolerate close neighbours.
• Do not add a perch below the hole; it only helps predators such as squirrels and cats.
• Avoid metal or plastic boxes, which overheat and suffer condensation.

If you have mature trees, resist the urge to tidy every dead limb. Rot holes, loose bark and hollow stumps support bats, solitary bees and the caterpillars that feed your tits in the first place.

Water, and plenty of it

Every creature you want in the orchard needs to drink, and most need to bathe. A shallow dish set at ground level among the trees will be used by blackbirds, thrushes and hedgehogs, while a raised bird bath brings in finches and tits without giving the local cat an easy ambush.

Keep it topped up through dry spells and float a couple of small stones in it so bees and wasps can land safely without drowning. If you have room, a small wildlife pond is even better: frogs and newts take slugs and beetles, and damselflies hunt aphids along the tree line. Site it in partial sun, with one gently sloping side so anything that falls in can climb out.

Encourage the predatory insects already on your patch

Ladybirds, lacewings and earwigs all eat aphids, and you can give them somewhere to overwinter with very little effort. Tie a bundle of bamboo canes, hollow stems or rolled corrugated card into the fork of a tree — lacewings and earwigs will tuck themselves inside and emerge hungry in spring.

Ground beetles are your night patrol, hunting codling moth larvae and plum moth caterpillars as they descend the trunk to pupate. They need cover, so leave a rough grass margin or a mulch of compost or leaf mould around the base of each tree instead of bare, scuffed earth. Better still, band the trunks with a strip of corrugated cardboard in late summer and check it every few weeks; the larvae gather in the corrugations, and you can dispose of them or leave them for the birds.

Do not spray broad-spectrum insecticides. They kill the very predators you have spent seasons cultivating, and the aphid population usually bounces back faster than the ladybirds do.

Learn to live with a little damage

Here is the part that catches people out. A wildlife-friendly orchard will never look like a supermarket display. Birds will peck at your cherries, wasps will hollow out a few plums, and earwigs will nibble the odd apricot.

Accept that a share of the crop is the rent you pay for free pest control. If the damage feels too heavy, use netting on one or two favourite trees, hang reflective tape or old CDs to unsettle the birds, and pick fruit slightly early where you can ripen it indoors. What you should not do is declare war on the whole population.

Watch the balance over a few seasons. Ideally you should see the small stuff — aphids, caterpillars, sawfly larvae — get picked off before it ever becomes a problem, and you should be finding ladybird larvae on the roses and wrens fussing in the hedge. When that happens, your orchard is working as it should: not pest-free, but pest-managed, and far more interesting for it.