The plans for the garden under this scheme are relatively simple, put plants and objects that will increase the wildlife value of the garden all year round, but at the same time are children and dog friendly.
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Trees
During late winter we planted two trees, a Crab Apple and a Rowan, both of which have started to grow strongly, the crab apple has already flowered which was a magnet for bees in the recent warm spell. The children's slide was starting to fall apart so we decided to take it down and plant some shrubs against the back fence, this included a holly, viburnum and mahonia, between these shrubs we have also created a log pile.
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Bat box
We have put up a bat box on to the front of the house but as yet we don't think we have any bats in it yet, and we have built an insect house and as you can hopefully see from the attached photo's we had some help to build it, and I have also included some photos of what our garden looked like before we started.
Summer 2007
Without question the highlight was the blue tits fledging 6 chicks unfortunately they did not come back to raise any more broods, but we still have them visiting our garden. We also found a couple of families of mice nesting in the garden as well.
Probably due to the poor weather during the summer months we had mixed results from the plants we grew from seed, the poached egg plants and marigolds did not do very well at all, as the slugs seamed to like them very much. One plant that did very well and attracted loads of insects was the corn marigolds, they are still flowering now and attracting insects.
We did not see many butterflies in the garden during the summer but the late autumn sunshine has brought a lot of butterflies into the garden, species include Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoise shell and Comma.
One species of bird that seemed to have a good breeding year in our area was the house sparrow as we had loads of young birds in our garden, which has also been appreciated by the local Sparrow hawk, as we saw one catch a sparrow and it continued to eat it on our lawn.
Since we are well in to Autumn I am starting to put the pond in, next to the pond I am going to make a bog garden and have log piles behind it. During this exercise I will also be moving some plants around and making space for more to increase the wildlife value of the garden for years to come, some of these plants include Pyracantha, Buddleia, Echinacea to name a few. Another job I am planning to do over the winter months is to put support wires on the wall at the back of the house so we can try and grow a wisteria on it.
Our bird table was falling apart so I bought a stand that you insert in the garden and hang feeders off it. We have put this up and put some new and different feeders on it, these include one for thistle seeds and meal worms, these are being well used by the normal garden birds we always have but we have had a couple Coal tits visiting the feeders which we have never seen before in our garden. We have also got ourselves a ground bird feeder which is proving very popular with a Robin.
During the winter we did feed the birds but we didn't seem to attract very many, but when spring started the feeders became very popular, birds that we have seen in the garden include most of the common varieties House sparrows, Starlings, Blackbirds, Robin, Wren, Blue and Great tits, dunnocks and magpies. The most unusual visitor was when we saw what we think was a juvenile buzzard sat on the fence. More recently we seem to have a daily visit from a wood pigeon and a pair of collard dove.
We have also put a big dish on the ground to act as a bird bath, and this has proved to be very popular with the sparrows who are always drinking and bathing in it.
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Birds
The main project this year was going to be installing a pond but this has been put on hold until the autumn, this is because we put a bird box on the back fence that we was given for a Christmas present, and to our surprise a pair of blue tits have built a nest in it and it has been lined with some hair clippings from our dog. We currently believe the eggs have now hatched as the parents are flying in and out all the time, so hopefully we will see some young blue tits in the garden over the coming months. Unfortunately this bird box is close to where we was going to put the pond, so we thought it was best to put installing the pond back to the autumn as not to disturb the blue tits.
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Planting Schemes
The main idea behind the planting schemes for the garden include putting various shrubs or perennials down the sides of the garden to give year long attraction to wildlife and have highly scented annuals in front of the house to attract insects in the warm sunny conditions, once we have built the pond any remaining soil left over will also be used to build a rockery here to allow us to grow plants that don't like to be waterlogged in the winter.
We are currently growing a number of plants from seed that should help attract butterflies and other insects, these include lavender, poached egg plant, teasels, corn marigolds, honesty, sweet rocket to name a few these will be planted out into the garden over the coming weeks.
During the summer we will review how the garden is developing and make plans on what to do next year one area already being considered is what plants to grow on the wall of the house.