Wild-life Garden Blog

The notes from an Edinburgh wild-life garden featured on this site now have their own blog, mywildgardenyear.blogspot.co.uk.

They are written by George Harris, chair of the St John's Green Ginger Group which runs Earth be Glad as well as working to reduce St John's environmental footprint in practical ways.

George updates the blog most weeks, so follow him on twitter @historylecturer to be sure not to miss any posts.

Notes from a wild-life garden: June 6th

When I picked up my grandson from nursery today, he argued that it was still spring. I thought it was summer and proved my point by buying us both an ice cream. I am sure I am right because of the state of my wild garden. It is no longer on the way. It has arrived. The meadow (only about four square metres) is spangled with speedwells and buttercups, with a fringe of Herb Robert against the hedge.

 

The meadow

The pond is starting to disappear in the middle of the mass of growth that surrounds it. The flag irises are at their best and I think that the hacking back I did last winter means that we really will get proper water lilies this year.

 

The pond

The wild flower window box (which exists partly as an example for those less lucky with space than I am) looks as though it is going to have a lot of colour very soon

 

The wild-flower window box

and the hedge is a wonderful mass of leaf-shapes of a bewildering variety of shapes, of species and of greens.

 

Part of the hedge

The bird feeders need refilling twice a week at least. The greenfinches have discovered that the very expensive sunflower hearts are even more to their taste than the merely expensive nyger seed. I strongly suspect there is a mallard nest in one of the thickets, but I am not sure. If we get ducklings, I’ll let you know.

In some ways the jolliest news is that our bijou insect house really has been used by mason bees. Here’s the photographic evidence to prove it.

“What is all this juice and all this joy?” Well, it is within fifteen minutes walk of the West end of Edinburgh.

Notes from a wild-life garden. April 30th

Ten days of Easter holiday in the Lake District spoiled me for natural gardening. The unspeakable beauty of old deciduous woods coming into leaf, and of spring flowers on banks and hedgerows can hardly be matched in Edinburgh Central. And the weather was superb as well.

 However, I returned home knowing that there would have been masses of growth, a lot of weeding to do and who knows what else.

I always hope for lots of birds nests, of course. But I’m not sure there are any this year. My new nesting box is either too low, to sunny, too close to the house, too vulnerable…. 

Possibly there are more suitable sites than breeding blue tits this year. Certainly they no longer seem to be the dominant bird at the feeders; one sees the odd one not the crowds queuing up. As for the thickets of thorny shrubs and ivy – well, there may be nests, but I am not sure, and don’t want to poke about disturbing nervous young couples. Given the number of pestilential cats around our garden is not a perfect nursery. I did see a pair of mallard walking around, possibly looking for a site. The female sits so still and quiet once nesting that one might have one somewhere and not know it.

There are several wild flowers around that I am pleased to see. I am glad the cuckoo flower has re-appeared. It is so delicate and subtly coloured. 

The dominant wild flower right now is the dandelions, of which we have a brave show. Of course they get weeded out from many places, but their colour is magnificent, and their seed heads are one of nature’s best designs.

Meanwhile I’ve got the veg patches sown up. I was pleased to see a frog while weeding, and have left some cover for him. My experience is that the theory of wild gardening, that predators keep what we call pests in check, doesn’t work too badly. An adult frog certainly gets through a lot of invertebrates every day. It isn’t perfect, mind you, so most of the vegetable seedlings will be covered with plastic-bottle cloches till they get too big.

I went out the other night with a torch, hoping to see nocturnal creatures. There was nothing to write about in the pond, and I was about to give up. But I tried the compost heap, and there on a rhubarb leaf were two sorts of snails, three sorts of slug, a very large caterpillar and assorted bugs.

 Nearby were some of those monsters of the night, great grey slugs. They are not pests at all (eat dead leaves) but at three inches long they are very impressive. I have read about their mating, slimily intertwined whilst hanging in mid air, but never yet seen it.

Tomorrow is May Day. But the May Blossom will not be out for a week or two.

Meanwhile I have just started “Landscape and Memory” by Simon Schama. It is undoubtedly going to be a treat, though it is physically heavy, thanks to the many illustrations. I can recommend it to all EarthBeGladders.

Event: Wildlife Gardening

Whether in your own garden, on your windowsill or in the community, you can become a force for biodiversity by becoming a wildlife gardener.

History teacher George Harris's wildlife garden in Tollcross has been developing since he bought the house twenty years ago. His small urban oasis has played host to an astonishing diversity of flora and fauna and has afforded pleasure and education to generations of family and friends. In this inspirational and practical talk George shares his excitement about nature and describes how he did it with the help of a wealth of photographs.

Alan Elliot is a PhD student at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, working on the dynamics of speciation in the Himalayas. He is a passionate community gardener, participating in commemoration of the Forfar botanists and the Lost Garden of Penicuik, and St John's Church new biodiversity group. He will speak about community gardening and how in a city those without gardens can become wildlife gardeners too.

Monday 7 April, 7.30-9pm, St John's Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh. All welcome!

Follow @historylecturer and @alan_elliott on twitter.

Notes from a Wild-life Garden: March 25th

Even though spring has definitely arrived, there was ice on the pond in the morning. High pressure, as is well known, means clear skies at night and rapidly falling temperatures. But it is still spring. Hooray.

In the shady bank below the hedge the celandines are starting to come into flower. So are the primroses. The primroses were given to me about twenty years ago by an elderly friend in the Lake District who had grown them from seed. She was an energetic wild flower campaigner, constantly nagging the parish council to see that verges were cut at the right time – after seed had been set. Her legacy is some wonderfully rich and diverse verges around Coniston.

Lots of the wild flowers seem to be yellow at the moment. This is no accident, but relates to what the pollinating insects are looking for at this season. There was a big bumble bee bumbling around. Presumably it was a queen, just emerged from hibernation, looking for some nourishment before finding a place to nest. We get a bumble bee nest most years, and they are one of my favourite things to watch. They like holes between roots, or at the base of tussocks of old grass, so a very tidy garden will tend to be inhospitable. Mine is not very tidy.

Being just back from holiday I had refilled the bird-feeders, and there was plenty of action there. The special nyjer seed feeder was crowded with goldfinches. They are now so common in our little patch of gardens that one might take them for granted – except that they are so very lovely. It was particularly pleasing to see so many sparrows chirruping and bustling around, feeding, drinking and having dust baths. I think they like our garden because there are so many thickets in which to roost.

However, the main action yesterday was round the pond. At the beginning of the month a heron was eating so many frogs that I erected a ramshackle system of netting and branches to try and preserve some of the breeding colony. Sure enough we came back from holiday to find a goodly mass of spawn. Yesterday a pair of mallard were wandering around, trying to find some open water. I guess (with no evidence) that they are a pair who have been in previous years. If so, two years ago they ate every scrap of spawn, and all the tadpoles. As a result I made a little nursery pond for a few refugee tadpoles. But this year, as I say, there is anti-heron netting. Even in this miniature setting the ethical dilemmas of conservation have too be faced.

Meanwhile, however, the heron was back. Male frogs, exhausted by mating, must make easy prey. I saw it catch three in about five minutes, two in an unprotected corner of the pond and one in the thick rough on the verge. It found it tricky to get the frogs adjusted for swallowing, and kept turning them round, and sluicing them in the water. I think, though it was hard to see, that one victim had been impaled, not pecked, and was particularly awkward to get unstuck.  In search of a photo I kept moving closer until eventually it took off, a frog still in its beak.

No sooner had it cleared the wall than there was a great screeching and three angry gulls swept down of the roof and mobbed the heron, shouting what sounded like very bad language. I saw the heron later, sitting on the neighbour’s wall, still clutching the frog. Later on a pair of crows started hopping around in the tree tops (we have one big old tree. So do several neighbours) which could lead to more big-bird squabbles later on. Those gulls do not like rivals of any sort, especially if they might be egg-eaters.

All this spring-watch excitement takes place within fifteen minutes walk of Princes Street, in the centre of Edinburgh. I recommend wild-life gardening to anyone. Step 1: No pesticides 2. Step 2: Don’t be too tidy.

Notes from a wild-life garden: March 7th

March certainly came in like a lion this morning. I wore three jumpers under my coat to combat the wind-chill factor and was driven in by a snow-shower. (This garden, by the way, is in the south-centre of Edinburgh, Scotland.)

However, it was a pleasure to see and hear a good many frogs splashing and croaking in the pond while I got on with weeding and tidying the most managed of my wild flower beds. A robin came to assist. I suppose robins evolved to take advantage of places where big mammals turn up the soil, so it is probably anthropomorphic rubbish to call them “friendly”, but I like them a lot. I hope to be able to report on some successful nesting next month.

This business of managing a wild-flower bed may seem a bit odd, but there are some wild flowers I want here (campion, foxglove, poppies and so on) and some I do not (docks, nettles, dandelions, couch grass). This is a very arbitrary distinction, I admit, and the so-called weeds have other places to flourish in the garden, in the strips I think of as verges. The most arbitrary distinction is to like meadow buttercups but to root out creeping buttercups. The fact is that wild gardening is by definition interventionist. If I just left everything unmanaged there would soon be a thicket of nettles and brambles and hogweed, with ash and sycamore gradually taking over. This is good in places no doubt, but not in a small garden.

The ethical dilemmas involved in being interventionist loomed very large around the pond in February. What fun to see a heron on the water-margin. How much less fun to see it eat several frogs in a few minutes, on three days running. 

In the end I rigged up a system of coastal defences and boarding netting to keep the great bird away. I’m sure the frog population of Edinburgh is not going to be wiped out by herons, but I fear that the little breeding colony in EH10 might be. Anyway, on the one hand the heron got some pretty substantial meals at the end of winter; on the other there seems to be plenty of frog activity (though no spawn yet). Two years ago every scrap of spawn, and tadpoles, was wiped out by a pair of mallard. It’s tough out there.

At the other end of the garden there are four bird-feeders, devouring money and providing daily pleasure. If the person who gave me a feeder shaped like an apple in a Church Choir Secret Santa is reading this they may be pleased to know that, filled with sun-flower kernels, it is emptied every few days by a flock of siskins. What one might call “normal” garden birds appear most days – including plenty of sparrows, I’m glad to say. Their numbers have declined but our neighbourhood provides a lot of food and a lot of roosting space.

Meanwhile spring is busting out all over as far as plants are concerned. I love it!