TopHat,
That's not a garden, it's a park! Is that the wood adjoining your spread or is it your actual garden? It looks enormous!!
To answer Greendawn's question, as you know I have been seriously ill but a couple of weeks ago the professor told me I was in remission. Since then my level of fitness has increased and my deviant manly urges have returned (hope Crumpet's reading this)!
Yesterday I was out in the garden all day and absolutely loved it! My son, Dominic, and I dug up turf from one part of the garden and transplanted it to another. We are planning to have a cornfield meadow and I was hoping the seeds would arrive today so that I could plant them - but, alas, no (that's why I'm spending time on JWD!).
Our garden is specifically aimed at attracting wildlife. It is a wildlife garden but, because of my illness, it went into a state of being unkempt. Claire works hard in it, but it is such a large suburban garden it is difficult for her to maintain on her own as she works extremely hard at her job during the day and then becomes a typical housewife when she returns home. Plus, Claire has had to look after me these past three years.
Well, I absolutely love gardening. I planted 200 tree saplings here around 4 years ago in order to make a hedgerow. I also built a pond and made a spring meadow. We already had damson trees here and last year they provided us with 30lbs of fruit, which Claire turned into jam.
We also have blackberries and raspberries growing, plus I have planted cherry and apple tress at the bottom of the garden to make a small orchard. We have a 24 feet conservatory at the other end of the garden which allows us to observe everything. With the weather as beautiful as it is of late I am thoroughly enjoying life and the other night we were visited by two hedgehogs. What is so pleasing is that we released three hedgehogs into our garden around 3 years ago and since then young ones have been spotted. Our next-door neighbour said he hadn't seen a hedgehog for 20 years so it looks like our released ones did the business!
In the pond we have frogs and smooth newts. This year 6-7 frogs displayed signs of the deadly frog virus that swept through Britain last year. I thought my frogs were spared it, but obviously not. At least seven have died from it but other frogs appear extremely healthy, hence the tadpoles being hatched. We also have the dreaded dragonfly larvae in the pond, which eat frog and newt tadpoles - but that's nature and when the dragonfly larvae leave the pond to turn into mature dragonflies it is a spectacle well worth seeing. The dragonflies are absolutely beautiful and when they take off they zoom around the garden.
The spring meadow was poor last year (the year before it was glorious) but I have a feeling this is going to be a great year for gradeners in the UK. I've never seen so much greenery and there are shoots coming out everywhere.
Ian
