My garden is smallish and nothing special at all – but it is organic. Always has been, for 20 odd years.
I don’t worry about snails and slugs. They can get on and do what they do. I don’t grow hostas any more because the slugs loved them just too much and turned them into lace, which while pretty and unusual, wasn’t the point.
Bird are what I worry about; the extraordinary and disappointing change in the bird landscape of the average garden.
I worry especially because early the other morning, sitting in bed, I heard a loud and lovely song from outside the window. I had no idea what it was. Too hearty for a warbler, but more melodic than a blackbird. A complex song. I rushed to get the binocs and there it was, sitting singing its heard out on the very top of a neighbour’s tree; a mistle thrush.
I was ashamed of myself for not knowing it. But thinking about it, I reckoned it was about ten years since I’ve seen a pair of mistle thrushes in the garden. Song thrushes occasionally, yes, but not mistle thrushes.
Yet when I was young, in the garden of the family home ten miles away, mistle thrushes, song thrushes, chaffinches, bullfinches, greenfinches were seen most days. Thrushes were as common as blackbirds. Bullfinches wiped out now, chaffinches surviving but not as numerous. So what happened? Garden chemicals. Evil blue slug pellets, that’s what. So a lot’s changed. Happily the humble dunnock seems to thrive in the garden here, along with blue tits and great tits, house sparrows, and hedge sparrows, wood pigeons, starlings with occasional visits from goldcrests and goldfinches.
Blackbirds are nesting in the corner and a pair of fat wood pigeons have chosen a particularly spindly and wobbly branch on which to build a nest – overhanging the path to my favourite sitting place.
The bird table attracts bigger birds too. A sparrowhawk called in once and we saw it plucking its freshly killed blue-tit prey while sitting on our back fence. Red in tooth and claw. Fair enough. The whole garden is a bird table, come to that. Plenty of times herons have plundered the pond. Quite something to see the speed of attack and how quickly they’re back into the air.
Anyway, that’s enough fauna – apart from the frogs, of course, the handsome frogs dappled black and yellow and green from their hiding place under a big patch of variegated ivy – so on to the flora.
There’s some fruit; a spartan apple tree on a medium kind of stock, so it’s compact and controllable and a Victoria plum which is a bit neglected, in the corner but keeps on trying.
There are shrubs – planted mostly for fragrance – Rosa rugosa, orange blossom, jasmine plus Hypericum Hidcote, Acer palmatum dissectum by the pond, which is probably my favourite shrub of all because of it’s beautiful leaf shape, the autumn colours and the way it looks rounded, soft, graceful and generally lovely. Ooh I nearly forgot the trees – the magnolia which I’ve pictured in a previous blog – and an Indian Bean tree which has leaves like large floppy lime-green handkerchiefs. Hasn’t flowered yet but we live in hope.
Looking forward to drowsy, warm summer Sunday mornings sitting in the garden, watching the life in the pond, damselflies, dragonflies that hover at eye level, regarding you with their incredible complex eyes, pond skaters, water boatmen, the whirlybugs that sometimes get trapped in the waterlily flowers. I don’t do much gardening. A bit of a blitz twice a year and some tidying in between but that’s it.
Here are a few images of some of what’s flowering at the moment, taken yesterday. Just arrived back from a run and the sky was cerulean blue and the sun was lighting everything beautifully so I grabbed the camera.
The cherry tree is a Kanzan. Common as muck but blousy and beautiful. It’s a big tree now. I hate having it pruned but about two months ago, it was cut back professionally by a guy I trusted (because he could see just where it was pruned about six years ago) and thankfully, it’s still covered in flower buds which are just opening.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Jan! What a nice blog; lovely pics as well.
Our garden is organic, but not by my chocie I have to say. My husband is an obsessive eco warrior – we have cabbages sprouting out of tyres, grow bags everywhere and a huge pile of compost!
I wanted hanging baskets to brighten the palce up, so he cut up some plastic milk cartons, stuck flowering chrysanths in them and hung them from the fence posts!
OUr neighbours are the opposite; theirs is a neatly manicured lawn, immaculate paving stones and beautiful hanging baskets. They despair of us, I am sure. And in the summer all the flies and insects come to our garden because it’s chemical free! Agh!
Beaut photos, Janh1. Many thanks for posting them.
Excellent post Jan. Heartwarming and making ache to get outside.
I live in a flat so we have a communal garden.
Eco is an anathema to the ruling committee alas. They are even planning to get rid of our compost bins. Sacked our organic gardeners in favour of people who come and rip out plants and put in new bedding plants at variuos times of year. Fortunately we still see the benefits of the the ogs did in their brief time here. Sensitive planting and annual flowers.
Since they chopped back the creepers to reveal a bare unattractive wall, and the neighbours have cleared their completely overgrown garden, we have a lot less bluetits and I’ve not seen a wren for a while either. At one point we had dozens of the former and at least two pairs of the latter. Come to think of it, the jay hasn’t been about for a while either…
Thanks for that lovely blog and photos, janh1. We have been enjoying this beautiful English spring in our daughter’s garden. I put out food and get an amazing variety of birds: jays, woodpecker, all sorts of tits including the long-tailed which always seem to travel mob-handed, greenfinch, goldfinch and even a bullfinch, as well as resident robin, blackies, sparrows, wren and thrush. Such a pleasure to watch them.
Lovely blog and photos Jan. Your attitude to gardening is one I admire…I get too hung up on controlling stuff, but don’t do enough to keep it all under control, then worry. Sit back and enjoy doesn’t come into it often enough! I shall try to learn from you.
This afternoon is our village plant sale. One has to queue up at least 20 mins before the doors open to stand a chance of good purchases. The plant sale usually inspires me to do more gardening – but with 12 for supper tonight, maybe I won’t do much more than water the greenhouse?
I have just been on a walk, I meant to add, Jan: and heard a mistle thrush – I whistled with it back and forth a few times as I went down into the quarry, just as I sometimes do with the blackbird that perches in our out of hand lilac. Neighbours probably think I’m bonkers.
Good blog. We still have most of the birds you mention … I rarely see bullfinches, but that was always the case. Plenty of goldfinches and thrushes. No wrens hunting in my dry stone walls these days … I think the harsh winter may have killed them all off.
I’m working in the garden today … something of a rarity.
Good post. You rather take the moral high ground with your organic gardening. I am going to write a blog on that.
Oh my goodness, what photos. Nothing in my garden will ever match the beauty you’ve captured with you lens. Amazing!
MOO: “You rather take the moral high ground with your organic gardening.”
An instance of your own projections i think! 🙂
Nice blog.
In haste, day of our plant sale, all the veg/herb starts are mine and already there, but must erect the stand! (A mixture of organic and not)
Thank god the Lions are putting on a breakfast!
Maybe, as the only person qualified around here as a Master Gardener, I will put up a blog on organic gardening with no projections, judgements or nutter eco warrior sentiments.
If there is any interest.
Agree about the lack of birds in the UK, but there is a lot you can do to assist them in quite a small space.
Must go.
Wow, what wonderful photo’s. Great blog as well.
I am no gardener, not at all. I have a huge garden, it is mostly grass and over grown bushes, I do have a hydranga that I prune once a year in the front garden and have a flowerbed along the front, which is totally natural, haven’t planted anything in it but in the summer it bursts alive with colours and looks the best in the street-my neighbours are fanatical gardners, every plant position is planned, the grass is perfect and so level, what they must think of mine, well…
I have noticed a lot of bees back this year, which can only be a good thing. We do have gullivers, lots and lots of them, come in every night from the sea I guess and screech at us first thing in the morning to wake us up. We have chaffinches and tits of lots of vareities that nest in the hedges and house…don’t ask and we seem to get a lot of starlings on their migratory trail, but only in one direction.
xxx
Sounds like your chap is a proper green. I’m only a light green – meaning I don’t use chemicals
and we chip up any woody cuttings to use as a mulch on the borders.
We haven’t room for imaginative ways with tyres – the terrace is full of four recycling bins!
Thanks Bearsy 😀 Appreciated.
Isobel, it’s a great shame that your committee don’t see the benefits of a chemical-free, nicely planted plot.
Makes life a little more worthwhile to watch a bit of wildlife.
Hi Sheona, yes long-tailed tits do arrive mob-handed, chatting and flitting about busily.
Dead pleased that at least you have a bullfinch, so they still exist!!
Thanks Pseu. Oh I can only be lazy because the garden’s so small. Like an outdoor room, really.
If I had big beautiful herbaceous borders as you do, I’d have to do a lot more!
Pseu, why does it not surprise me that you call to thrushes? 😀
I quack at ducks. Bloody convincing, I’ll have you know!
Hi Brendano. Ah wrens are sweet. Hope you achieved good things in the garden!
Greetings MaidofOrleans – I don’t think of it as moral highground. Just a matter of not using chemicals
and being philosophical that I’ll never grow the kind of plants that slugs and snails love, that’s all. 😉
Look forward to your blog.
Ah Christina yes I’d be interested to read your blog on organic gardening too.
The one time I am tempted is when our new apple shoots grow a little cotton woolly thing and there is some die-back of the new shoots. But the tree itself still thrives and fruits every year so I figure it can’t be doing much damag.
Thank you Kate and hi. Not sure if we’ve met before. Even though you’re not a gardener, sounds like you’ve got a wildlife garden without even trying.
Wildlife doesn’t like an over-tidied garden. 🙂
Co: The idea of you posting an unbiased ” blog on organic gardening with no projections, judgements or nutter eco warrior sentiments” is so difficult to imagine I’d almost buy tickets!
Just a little thing tho’: “nutter eco warrior” strikes me as somewhat on the judgemental side already. 🙂
Janh – well yes, we do still have wildlife – in fact I just hurtled outside because i heard a row and thought it might be a fox having a pop at Cat who is a bit under the weather (his own fault; fighting injury, he is the CO of the feline world) but it turned out to be a dog in a neighbour’s garden. Lots of bees around here. We have quite a few local beekeepers and the honey is delicious.
Most of the committee seem to see the garden as a backdrop to sunbathing.
Beautiful photos Jan.
I’m no gardener – and I do use chemicals, weed killer. So I’ll be interested to see what Christina has to say.
(I do a pretty good range of animal noises, Actually Jan. It goes back to reading stories. No ‘grunt, grunt,’ for a pig. Had to do the real thing…)