Making a Difference

In this blog, we aim to make a difference - it's a simple as that! As the British countryside becomes more and more impoverished by unsympathetic management and the increasing pressures of an ever-increasing human population, one of the things we can do is to abandon our thoughts of neat lawns and regimental rows of bedding plants and try to turn our gardens into more welcoming places for wildlife.

Just over a year ago, we moved into a property with a half acre of established garden. It's a lovely garden, with plenty of trees and shrubs and already quite a nice range of wildlife, but we aim to improve it. So this blog aims to highlight the species that we find on our half acre and hopefully over time, to record the increases in species that we find due to careful switching of habitat from fully ornamental (as it is now) to something more akin to a semi-natural habitat. We hope you enjoy the ride!!

So here we are, early January - out with the old and in with the new...

Nothing says 'out with the old' more clearly than fire. But this is a managed fire, to get rid of an over abundance of old plant material so that we can get on top of things a little. We'll never just set fire to piles of dead stuff either, as you never know who might be wintering there. Everything has been moved twice and well and truly shaken out, to spare as much as we can before the burn.

'In with the new' begins even before the turn of our calendar year - already our lawn area is sprouting a mass of crinkly leaf rosettes - Primroses will start off our plant species list!

And as for the old garden bench! Well, it's become an ecosystem in its own right now, to the point where we just can't bring ourselves to sit on it! Lichens are complex organisms, formed from a close association between fungi, algae, bacteria and who knows what else; each association gets given a scientific name - but I'll need to leave the identification to Megan!