Developing a Community-Nature-Reserve — Five Ambitious Projects
As reported in our last article, our aim is to develop a community nature reserve, with households in our area devoting four metre-squared of their garden to nature. In that article we suggested five cheap and easy ways to join in. In this article, we’re describing five more challenging ways of using your four metre- squared. Let’s start by thinking of different ways the area can be constructed. In our garden we have wildlife areas in the following layouts:
We have a curved corner of a lawn devoted to wildflowers, a rectangular woodland shrub area, a long thin strip of native hedgerow, a corner-piece pond and T-shaped raised beds and herb gardens. We’re also creating a semi-circular(ish) bog garden.
Create a Little Woodland Shrubbery
For those who don’t have space for trees but wouldn’t mind some bushy shrubs — perhaps in part of a lawn or an undeveloped flower bed — a few carefully chosen plants will absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and provide a habitat and food supply for beneficial insects, bees and birds. We’ve planted dog-wood, viburnum, ‘winter beauty’ honeysuckle and euonymus in a corner of one lawn. The dogwood in particular, provides a beautiful colour throughout winter and early spring with its bright red branches and all four shrubs have been chosen for their flowers (nectar for bees) and berries (food for birds). We’ve also planted woodland bulbs between and around the shrubs and these provide colour in early spring. Finally, we allow the grass to grow long in summer and have been rewarded with clover, buttercups, vetch and bird-foot trefoil without sowing a single seed.
Buying four or five shrubs for an area like this can be a bit expensive so now is the time to consider ordering some bare-root shrubs which are much cheaper. Plenty of places sell them. Here’s one I ‘search engined’ earlier:
https://www.jacksonsnurseries.co.uk/plants/plant-type/bare-root-plants/bare-root-shrubs-en/
Grow a little native ‘thicket’ or hedgerow
A thicket could occupy a curved corner of a garden or a circle. A hedgerow would work well in a strip. Both of these give gardeners a great opportunity to introduce several attractive native plants that will provide a lovely display of blossom in spring followed by fruit and berries later in the year. Ideally the chosen shrubs will grow quite densely and intertwine to produce a bit of a barrier that only small birds, butterflies and insects can enter. If the shrubs are prickly, even better — let’s have at least parts of our gardens squirrel-magpie-and-cat-free!
We have grown a hedgerow with wild cherry, crab apple, hazel, maple, hawthorn and blackthorn. In the fullness of time we might be able to share fruit and nuts with local birds. We’ve interspersed these shrubs with ivy, hops, dog-roses and honeysuckle — you could also add blackberry. In front of the hedgerow we have more common garden plants, such as fuchsia, dhalias, oriental poppy, scabious and peonies to provide colour in the summer.
For more detail on planning your hedgerow read our previous article.
Create a ‘Kitchen Garden’
A kitchen garden is simply a vegetable and/or fruit garden that has flowering plants in amongst the food. Organising a fruit-and-vegetable plot like this has the advantage of making it much more attractive to look at. It will also attract beneficial insects which will, hopefully, feast on those pesky aphids that might eat the fruit and veg. In the winter, the flowering plants can be dug into the soil to provide a free manure.
Easy annual plants to grow in a kitchen garden include sunflowers, marigolds, cornflowers, wild onions, clover, borage, wild garlic — we’re growing nasturtiums for the first time this spring. Perennial plants are also good but remember not to dig them into the soil after they die back. Try herbs like rosemary, marjoram, oregano, chives (especially chives!), sage (including a cultivated sage like hot-lips). Other good perennials that you might usually grow elsewhere will brighten any kitchen garden- try lavender, geranium, penstemon and scabious.
Dig for water!
This spring, we’re aiming to dig out a bog garden — this follows our success in creating a new pond which you can read about here
Making a bog garden should create a different environment so that we can introduce more diverse plants. These should attract all sorts of wild life and, if we’re lucky, might provide a birth place for dragon-flies, hover-flies and mayflies.
Our plan is to dig out a small, shaded, north-facing portion of our front lawn so that the bog will lie next to our wildflower meadow (read about our efforts to sow a mini meadow here). We will first dig out the turf in the shape of a squashed semi-circle and keep it to one side. Then we’ll dig out the soil to a depth of about 45cm — keeping the soil for later. According to most online guides, the next step is to line the hole with plastic pond-liner but we’re going to try lining it with cast-off wood from last summer’s log cabin project. After that the idea would usually be to pierce the liner in several places — we should have some gaps between our planks and, if not, we’ll drill a few holes.
Finally, we’ll return the soil to the hole and fill it with water from a water-butt, before returning the turf. Hopefully, by then, my birthday will have passed and I’ll have been treated to a good range of bog-garden plants. As a hint to my nearest and dearest, I’ve sent a wishlist of native, wild-life friendly plants from this website.
Produce a Paradise for Pollinators
If you’re wondering about what to with a scraggy patch of garden or a lawn that never greens up to well — think about planting out a whole range of flowering perennials. With careful planning, you’ll get a lovely display of flowers from January to November and feed bees with all the nectar they can carry. This can be expensive if you’re relying on a garden centre for your plants so think about going online and choosing some plug-plants. These are small and much cheaper than potted plants but, if you plant them out carefully in March to April, they’ll be nicely established by autumn.
One way of enhancing your perennial patch is to mark out a walk-way and grow your plants along it. We’ve planted out a lavender-lined pathway through one lawn and, behind the lavender, have introduced rosemary and hot-lips sage along with penstemon, hellebores (for winter colour) and Black-eyed Susan. For an extra treat for the butterflies, we’ve included some sprouts and cabbage plants. There are early signs that there will be plenty of cabbage for us this spring, even though the outer leaves have taken a hammering from the grubs!. When this blooms in the summer, we’ll update you on how it’s going.
