Making a Wildlife Garden – Jane Mardon’s Winter Report

My new wildlife garden is surviving winter so far. It looks rather sad and dormant at present, though I spotted some snowdrops coming up and I bought a Winter Jasmine that has been cheerfully flowering.
I have read up what I could be doing throughout the winter in many different gardening books. Reading is all I’ve done! Am I rash to ignore it all and leave it a bit of a mess with, for example, fallen leaves under the flowering ornamental cherry tree ? Time will tell.

The trellis went up and I look forward to advice from friends on what plants will work best and grow quickly to cover the panels. My neighbours have liked the idea of trailing bee-friendly plants cascading over into their gardens. Hopefully I will get that sorted later in the spring.

The lawn is very soggy but the blackbirds, who are always in my garden come rain or shine, seem happy pecking at the soil and extracting worms throughout the day. I took part in the annual garden bird watch survey and was pleased to see that I also have green finches and robins quite regularly.

In the monthly ‘Climate Solutions’ group we talked about the problems of surface water flooding caused by hard-paving over gardens – unless you use permeable materials that allow the rainwater to drain through into the ground. The front garden where I now live has mainly shrubs and hydrangeas but a large area has small stones laid on top of plastic sheeting. I shall investigate that in the spring when I get the hydrangea pruned and maybe think of a better way to keep the area weed-free.

There’ll be plenty to do it seems, when the garden wakes up from hibernation. I’m enjoying it though, if only from the window at present.  Not sure that Monty Don would approve!