While her friends were out celebrating, Kate Bradbury spent last Christmas keeping the woodlice company in her new wildlife garden. A year on, and the bird feeders are full ...
As I write, 30 house sparrows are scrapping over the feeder outside my kitchen door. There are great tits in the smoke bush over the back fence to the end of my garden – I haven’t seen them come in yet, but I have seen a blue tit, a robin and a goldfinch, so there’s a good chance the great tits are coming in too. It will be a while before my garden is mature enough to provide shelter for these species, but the fact that they’re tentatively popping in for a sunflower heart now and then is a Big Deal.
This time last year I was still removing decking and weed-suppressant membrane, creating huge piles of stones which I would later use to make paths and edge my pond. On the last Saturday before Christmas I used some of the decking to make a planter, in which I added used compost, kitchen waste and manure, and created a sad display of hellebores, Japanese anemones and herb robert – a combination of plants I’d brought with me from my previous garden and those I’d found growing against the odds in lumps of moss in the decking. All my friends were at Christmas parties, proudly displaying their silly jumpers on Facebook, I was in the garden keeping the woodlice company.
Continue reading...from Gardening blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2h1CpeK
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