The Natural Gardener
Now it’s coming to the end of the growing season and the garden’s winding down, I tend to take stock of my plants and all the autumn jobs I need to do to boost my garden – new plantings, improving my soil of course, overwintering and planning for the future.
I like to cast my mind back and make a note of all the wildlife I’ve seen through the year, too. It helps me to decide whether I need to add more attractive features and plants for them. I’ve been pleased with my animal visitors – my new monster anthemis (which is still going) has been covered in beetles and at least two different types of hoverfly, my borage and buddleja awash with bees and butterflies. Solitary bees found my bee hotel, and I loved watching the little leafcutters bobbing about with bits of rose leaf to make their cigar-like nests. Greenfinches visited for the first time, while much earlier in the year a large, plump hedgehog strolled across the garden while we watched it from the window. All a lot better than two years previously when we moved in, when the garden was full of paving slabs and a ripped out kitchen! But for next year my plans are simple. I’m starting a wormery to cultivate some wonderful plant feed, I’ll be building up my border with some more easy pollinator perennials such as more anthemis, the new salvia ‘Amethyst Lips’ (cousin of ‘Hot Lips’), heucheras, achillea, and I’ve found a few lovely tanacetum ‘Robinson's red-flowered’. I’m planting all of them now.
This year I simply plonked some comfrey and borage plants and seeds into spare spots in pots – they were lovely big plants full of blooms and bees, so I’ll be planting those again. I’d like a small pond of some sort, but where to put it? The big challenges, however, will be choosing only sustainable compost and not buying any more plastic for the garden – we’ll see how I get on!