“The local fox keeps tabs on my garden progress”
Despite contracting a virus and cracking a rib in 2019, Adrian Thomas has made huge strides toward creating his own wildlife haven
Despite contracting a virus and cracking a rib, Adrian Thomas has made huge strides toward creating his own wildlife haven
FIVE YEARS ON, my acre of wildlife garden is starting to take shape. When I arrived here in December 2014, suckering damson trees had formed a dark thicket over half the garden and dozens of giant leylandii stole a great deal of light and sucked out most of the soil moisture. Oh, I do like a challenge!
I gave myself seven years to turn the garden around and transform it into a beautiful wildlife haven. Life sometimes intervenes, however, and after a hiatus last year when I contracted an energy-sapping virus, this year it was a cracked rib that put paid to heavy work for several weeks: the result of an over-enthusiastic moment on the badminton court. C’est la vie! One just has to work around the unexpected and be satisfied with what you’re able to do. My plan is now going to take an extra year to get the basics in place, but that’s fine. ➤
I call it the ‘Changing Rooms effect’ … it all looks a mess right up until the last five minutes
Nevertheless, when friends and family visit, I’m always nervous they’ll expect it to look more finished than it does. I call it the ‘Changing Rooms effect’: in those home make-over TV programmes, it looks a mess right up until the last five minutes when it magically all seems to come together. That’s how my garden is. So much is under way, but large areas are still the garden equivalent of paint pots and dust cloths. I can see exactly what it’ll look like, but there’s much flesh to put on the bones – and, some parts of the skeleton aren’t yet in place.
Rare blue butterfly
Extending the meadow areas has been a big job this year. In spring I dug over the ground and sowed colourful annuals. They looked after themselves the whole summer, then in August I cleared the spent stems and seedheads onto the compost and dug over the soil ready to sow a perennial wildflower meadow mix.
Preparing the ground in this way still stirs up a seemingly inexhaustible burden of weed seeds. I don’t use herbicides here, so after I’ve finished the late summer dig I water the soil, let the weeds come through, hoe them off or dig them out, then repeat again before sowing the meadow seeds. The first meadow area, sown in autumn 2017, came into its own this year – teeming with chirping grasshoppers and meadow brown butterflies from mid June to mid August. The real icing on the cake came in June however, when I found a small blue butterfly laying her eggs there. The most frequent blue butterfly in gardens is the holly blue, which flits around the tops of ivy and holly bushes, and some gardens entertain the common blue, but the small blue is a much rarer species altogether. It
shows how if you create the right habitat, wildlife will come.
Big barrowing job
Another big job was creating a new flower bed on a mound behind the pond. I wanted to make a ‘theatre’ of plants, in tiers, so those at the back don’t need to be very tall to look over those in front. Cue another mega soil-moving exercise, barrowing about 50 tonnes of earth (excavated when I dug the pond) into position and sculpting it into curves.
As a focal point I’ve used 8ft-high cut tree trunks – the remains of some dead pear trees – to create some natural art. Wedged in the ground in a pleasing trio, they form upright totem poles – the perfect habitat for wood-boring insects.
My artists are great spotted woodpeckers, already tap-tapping away at them for food. Of course, as soon as I develop one part of the garden, it then needs to be maintained, slowing the pace of change. Encouragingly, several aspects are now pleasing to the eye. When I arrived, I struggled to find anything that looked good through the camera lens but now I’m spoiled for choice. For example, the view from the house is now one of a verdant glade, with the pond I dug in 2015 at its heart. My tulip bed, floating above a sea of forget-me-nots, is a delight in spring, and ultimately, this view will be wrapped in much more colour as I fill the garden with perennial flowers.
Ripples & reflections
It’s important to take time out to enjoy my progress so far, watching birds come to bathe, enjoying the visits from a little egret and occasionally a kingfisher, or just gazing at the pond ripples and reflections. Next year I’m planning to dig another pond and dismantle an old chicken pen, sledgehammering 60 hefty concrete posts in the process! I’m also still whacking through piles of rubble from the house renovation to make a scree garden. Who needs a gym when you’ve got a garden?! Creating my wildlife haven is physical and mental therapy of the very best kind. ✿