Friday, 17 April 2015

Wildlife Gardening Season

 Self seeding Primulas- stick em in and let em go all over the place- including the lawn
 Garden with nice structure and form in need of some colour and more interest. Proposed improvements include filling in the gaps in the beds with some wildlife friendly ground cover (e.g. violets, campanulas), a barrel of bulbs to emerge over the season (snowdrops, daffs, tulips, aliums), a sprinkling of wildflowers e.g. Poppies etc and a few shrubs to create some height in the right places e.g. Buddleia, Dog Rose, Berberis. Also some climbers along the fencing to create some boundary interest (e.g. Clematis sp). 
 A fairly typical garden with some nice simple improvements to create interest and plenty of insects buzzing round. Not too much to do here (important to appreciate the objectives of not necessarily nature mad gardener/ owner) except a bit of maintenance- primulas in the lawn were a nice touch. The owners here have got things in shape- we'll just do the high and tough digging bits.
Another fairly typical local garden but in need of some colour. Too much Green Alkanet - too much green overall. Proposed improvements include tidying up and adding a wildlfower seed mix along the border on the left, a small flowering cherry, with bulbs and violets in the planting pit in the centre and the edging re-defined. Just simple, inexpensive improvements can transform a garden. (A nice Cherry at the back- 5 species of bee on the flowers. The insects love the Alkanet too so good to leave a good patch in ((but needs to be kept under control))) . 

Things are picking up at work. Pushing the wildlife gardening this year across our service area ( a 3-4 mile radius from our yard) and also trying to focus on a village scale wildlife gardening initiative in Hackbridge. 

A bit more on this here: Little Oak

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