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A new garden, a new adventure
By Peter Simmons
We moved a few months ago 350 miles north to Scotland; from a small terraced house in a small town in Herefordshire to a massive, detached, stone-built farmhouse outside Glasgow. The garden of the former was narrow and crammed with plants which, while seeming a good idea at the time of the visit to the garden centre the previous gardeners had made, had overgrown the garden to such an extent that it was barely navigable, let alone cultivable. We occasionally hacked and sawed and removed copious amounts of vegetation, but still it was like a deep, dark wood, filled mostly with foreign species. The birds loved it as it provided plenty of cover and nesting sites, so we left them to it and proceeded to do the usual, feed them and enjoy their songs. The New Garden
The new garden is around thirty times the size of the previous one, and surrounded by mature trees; oak, ash, birch, beech, horse chestnut, holly, fir, hawthorn ... . Within the trees is a lawn large enough to play cricket - cucumber sandwiches anyone? - around which, depending on season, a profusion of flowers blooms; first the snowdrops first sign that winter is soon to end, followed by crocuses signaling the warmer air of spring, and then the daffodils burst out in all their golden, trumpeting glory and when they are at last finished for the year and cut back, I can mow the lawn. During the first mowing I mow hundreds of tree seedlings just starting out in life, for which I feel a total heel. If only there was such demand for trees to plant that it was worthwhile meticulously digging them out one by one and planting up in pots. But alas no one seems to want trees that much despite there being a crying need for all of us to plant more trees. I save a few and plant them in promising locations, something for the future. Too late in the season
April 1st is too late to start planning a garden, especially when you have belongings to unpack and a business to get plugged in, connected and up and running again [two desktop systems and router and waiting for a new phone line to be connected], with ongoing work needing to be seamless. The garden is established and mature, and no one with any sense would just jump in and start changing things without seeing how it all worked. So we have started some vegetables; runner and French beans, tomatoes, planted out the mint which has lived in a pot for two years and was so glad to be finally in soil and able to stretch its roots that it grows new leaves every day, coinciding with the new potatoes which simply can't be cooked without mint. And I've cut the lawn, we've done some weeding and pruning, and tidied up the endless supply of fallen twigs of various sizes that living with mature trees and crows entails, that and the blossom which has already deposited a layer several inches thick across much of the drive and lawn. Trees make topsoil! Essentially we are learning the garden and its wildlife and how it all works. It's been around a long time, we are the newcomers, the immigrants. We have to learn its ecology and its ways, both to appreciate it and respect it. This is crow land
That's the first thing we learned, they have lived here perhaps for thousands of years, although they may have been persecuted in the time this was a farm as farmers have traditionally not been nice to crows. They have a native nervousness of us, despite getting food put out every day - which is usually gone in minutes - but they are getting slowly more used to us and will sit on a branch and study us as we move about the garden. Fascinating creatures, they have complex family structures, and personal relationships, interact continuously and do not attack other creatures despite all the lies that have been spread about them; they even have their own man-made artifact, the scarecrow. What I have observed is they spend hours searching for insects in the fields outside the garden, none of the other birds pay them much mind except the magpies who, lower down the corvid pecking order, move away when the crows arrive at the feeding table. Magpies warrant another item of intel, so watch this space. Changing colours
Back to the garden. Flowering shrubs have flowered, each in their time, giving an ever-changing look and feel to the shrubbery which rings the lawn, filling in space between the trees and providing much valuable feeding space for small birds and mammals. Many of them will have berries later which will provide an autumn addition to the diet. Cutting the grass
Once cut, grass grows more rapidly. I'm not sure of the scientific validity of that statement, but it's certainly my subjective experience. For a couple of days it looks just right, then the bumps appear where some grass has spurts of growth faster than others, eventually the whole area will become utterly uneven and long enough, any longer makes the mower labour as the long grass stems flatten and fail to get cut. It's also much harder work dragging it around - I don't have a sit-on motor mower, which, having previously spurned the very idea, looks increasingly attractive with such a vast expanse of grass to cut weekly. I love the smell of freshly cut grass, so it's both work and pleasure, especially as I do it barefoot with the tactile feel of the grass beneath my feet and the smell in my nostrils. On a sunny day with birdsong filling the air and frothy clouds drifting lazily across a metallic-blue sky as I cut, I am at peace in the world. The garden is also visited by foxes, so we leave the odd bits and pieces out overnight for them. They can often be seen in daylight, walking calmly by on the other side of the fence. We feel privileged.
Peter is a writer and photographer who see beauty in the intricate detail in nature and the endless panorama of colours and textures Earth entertains us with.
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Magpies feeding on the ancient picnic table
Horse chestnut blossom, usually too high to see is very low on branches nearly touching the ground
A beautiful flowering shrub, so far unidentified
A small rare flower discovered hiding away beneath much larger plants
Another flower adding colour
The quiet of evening
![A perfect yellow flowers, [a poppy?] sits waiting in the sun for a bee](img/images/files-4/18825.jpg)
A perfect yellow flowers, [a poppy?] sits waiting in the sun for a bee
Cherry blossom, first out even before the leaves
Cherry blssom frame for the house
Daffodils, sure sign of spring but a month later in Scotland
Not just birds come for the food table
Forget-me-nots growing nearby from which I shall gather seed for our garden; no garden is complete without a blue spray of these my favourite flower
PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Wild Bird Seed
A site all about wild birds and feeding
www.wild-bird-seed.co.uk
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![A perfect yellow flowers, [a poppy?] sits waiting in the sun for a bee](img/originals/files-4/18825.jpg)
