I love creating habitat, being outdoors and in contact with the earth. I’m also having a slight identity crisis.
It’s like this – I have a degree in ecology but no experience in practical habitat management or survey work. I do have experience in office administration and I need a job to pay the bills. I’m looking at applications for jobs I know I could get but my heart’s not in it. So I thought (lying awake at 5am) - ‘What If?’. What if I just went out into my garden – there, immediate - and created the beautiful habitat I know I could with time and effort and blogged about it?
It’s a big time of change for my family, with changes to education for the kids and potentially big work shifts for our family business too. There’s just a little gap – a void with all the balls in the air. In that space – before all the balls start falling – I’m going to grab the moment to try out a dream and share it with you.
So here it is - my neglected mess of a garden. What can I say, it was a busy summer and my chief mower and tidier had a hernia operation! On the positive, when we moved here ten years ago this was all blank grass. I’m particularly proud of the mixed native hedge, meadow and the ponds. The photos don't really show it fully so I did a little video at the end too.
This is the 'Upper Garden'. We're right in the center of our village and very overlooked so our big hedge shields us in this part of the garden. Our aim is to have this for play, beauty and picnics - all with wildlife in mind too.
Another angle on the Upper Garden showing our apple trees and to the side, my daughter's overgrown 'Fairy Garden' and the willow dome I planted for the kids. Also the amount of clover in the 'lawn'!
This is the Lower Garden and errrrmmm……….slightly embarrassing……….these are my vegetable beds. No, I didn’t grow anything this year. Lots of clearing up to do here!
........and this is the wildflower meadow so pretty much meant to look like this at this time of year though it did look more interesting when it was all in flower. This is where I will be starting work as I'm still getting it established so we need a bit of bare earth for some extra seed planting. I have a big insect bank in the background there with a superb row of raspberry canes.
Here's the video to give a more complete impression of the garden. There are so many little areas in the garden that we've created over time that you don't see in this but I hope to share them with you in future blogs.
There is a lot of autumn work that needs to be done. I’ll be starting with the meadow which needs cutting and reseeding a little. Then we’ll clear around the ponds and move some lovely native bog plants that have got so out of hand that they drained one pond dry this year! There are fruit trees to attend too and I’d like to get at least one flower border looking like something out of a traditional, old-fashioned English cottage garden.
A lot to ask from one Mamma, whose children have just started school (though one about to come out and be home educated again!) and who should really be writing job applications? Maybe……and I know blogs don’t just make money overnight and that Steemit is not here as a job alternative. I’ve been genuinely enjoying it as a platform to connect with people and share the many delights and interests of life and that is still the main point of this blog. Maybe though, if I just get on and start doing what I love, even in a little way in my garden, magic will happen and I’ll start a ball rolling in the right direction.
Thank you for reading/watching this brief introduction to my garden. I hope to share more with you soon detailing how I create the habitats I have planned, random philosophy from this completely unconventional, amateur gardener and of course photos of the wildlife I find along the way.
Habitat Creation: The Garden Today – The Village Tomorrow – The World in the Future
