What a remarkable year for wildlife 2016 was. The long summer provided for the needs of multiple broods in many of our indigenous and resident species, vertebrate and invertebrate alike. Dragonfly Sympetrum striolatum It was pleasant to see the ongoing work in the RHS gardens at Hyde Hall in Essex
Read more →So, I’d been invited to do something with a rundown piece of woodland attached to my local Chapel. I remembered being part of an effort to tidy it up about ten years ago (a couple of years after joining the congregation on my arrival in Framsden to start work at
Read more →I’ve always wanted a little bit of woodland as part of my garden. Living in tied accommodation however, means you get what you get and keep it tidy and maintained. It was nice when we moved to find that our new garden abutted an untidy, overgrown orchard; not ours but a nice compromise.
Read more →Well, I promised to look at some of the species we began to see around the garden of our new tied cottage; So let’s start with our little feathered friends.
Read more →A Growing Garden with Room for Visitors. Time has moved on so quickly since we moved, it’s nearly six years already, and much has changed since the rough plan in ‘Bug Man #3’, so here’s a plan of what it looks like now… The garden layout It’s a garden that
Read more →Plants part 2…The move Maintaining memories Living in our previous tied accommodation had left us with many lovely memories of time spent in the garden, part of these memories was impacted on by the plants we had, and the thought of leaving everything behind could not be entertained. The biggest
Read more →Plants part one… An inheritance of sorts! As I mentioned last month part of the reason for being patient, in the creation of my garden, was in order to discover what was there already. To be honest arriving in a March snowstorm left me cold (awful pun!), doubting that there
Read more →Being patient. How the garden started to take shape. I’ve not always been the most patient of men, but it worked in our last tied cottage and I’m pretty committed to stuff that works. I moved to 108 in 1999 to start work at Helmingham Hall Gardens. My Jane joined
Read more →When Tony asked me to contribute to the website I wondered how I might do so without using material I might otherwise be using in the Wildlife Diary. The answer was quite simple, don’t use the same material! The website slot needed to be a little different so I’ve decided
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