Why do some people choose to literally rip out beautiful mature garden plants and wreck the existing and often well balanced garden ecosystem when they move into a new home? It baffles me.
The only thing that has been ripped out in our new garden is the black weed suppressing membrane. What an immediate difference this made. Blackbirds appeared almost instantaneously to forage for food.
Our new garden came with a fair amount of large shrubs and trees. They are presently full of bluetits,robins,wrens and blackbirds. One shrub in particular has blackbirds nesting and house sparrows dart in and out all day long . I would like to think that our garden shrubs provide a safe community for countless birds . In the future dictionaries might include the phrase “community shrub” , So let’s start using this term, you never know it might become a well used and useful word.
Spending the first year watching what wildlife frequents your garden is really important when you move home. Just imagine if you set about immediately chainsawing down a tree or shrub, which actually was a great and safe place for nesting birds. You would have lost a really useful habitat to promote the gardens equilibrium. I will be formatively pruning many of our shrubs, I definitely will not be taking anything out . Our new design will incorporate these important inherited plants.
The bay was huge and dense and reduced light levels to the house . After a couple of days of thinking about this, lifting the canopy was the simple solution , it really was all that was needed.
When we moved (last summer) our previous garden came in the van. As over the last 18 years containers were used to make our garden. Many of the plants had been propagated by seed or cuttings. It really was a lovely garden, and so it was lifted onto the tailgate, and is slowly being planted.
John and I each designed a seperate sketch scheme for no 26 , and here they are. Thankfully and quite remarkably they are actually very similar !
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Sally Wicks 