Fine for fungi

Autumn has arrived in my garden bringing with it much needed rainfall, a glut of apples and a second spring with warm weather and a flush of new lush grass. To go with this unnerving reminder of our changing climate there are a few late flowers, some fiery foliage and fungi popping up from their hidden mycelium just about everywhere, in containers, among fallen foliage and unfortunately, also from the planks of the timber deck!

As expected, the cotoneasters, self sown and intentionally planted, are smothered in berries and on cue the birds are back in the garden. Yesterday brought the first of the autumn’s migrants, a redwing, it came down to the pond for a quick wash and brush up with a dunnock, a great tit and a coal tit. Song birds don’t seem to be fussy choosing bath time buddies, there’s safety in numbers no matter what their size.

Last weekend, I went on a fungus identification walk, something I’ve intended to do every autumn for years. Once we got our eyes in there seemed to be fungi fruiting bodies everywhere. One of the organisers told us that what we were seeing was only just scratching the surface, it’s almost overwhelming to realise just how much the life of our gardens, fields and woodlands are inextricably linked to their fungi, never mind the black mould creeping around inside our bathroom window! We might find the weather strange but for fungi it seems to be just fine.

Hidden in plain sight

Every year, brambles prove themselves to have an unrivalled potential for damaging uncovered skin, but despite the inevitable splintered fingers and scratched forearms, the reward of a haul of glistening inky purple berries carried proudly to the kitchen is well worth the pain. There is huge satisfaction in following all those countless generations of foragers before us, who braved the entangling and piercing thorns without the aid of a fine tipped steel needle and bottle of TCP to disinfect the inevitable damage.

Not only a link to our ancestors, blackberry picking gives us an opportunity to see beyond the brambles seemingly unfriendly embrace. After a summer of pollen and nectar rich flowers, they then offer safety for small birds and mammals as they feast on their share of the berries safe within the tangled stems and then leave evidence in purple stained poo on the path.

Wetter weather creates ideal conditions for fungi to grow on the softening fruit, unpalatable to us but irresistible to flies and wasps, which in turn are predated by spiders waiting patiently, ready to ensnare unwary insects. Their webs delight us as cooler mornings create dew to sparkle like jewels along the fine silk, and now as blackberry season fades it’s the time for ivy flowers to open and for me to peer closely at every insect foraging on them.

I’ve searched for ivy bees with their brightly striped abdomen and furry thorax every year since they first appeared in Britain in 2001, as important a marker of the changing seasons to me now as the blackberries are, and a reminder that the really important things in my garden are not the ornamental flowers I fancy growing, but the ordinary, often overlooked natives, winding their way through the hedges and the unique wildlife they support, hidden in plain sight.


Patience.

It’s been a very unusual couple of weeks for me and my garden. We’ve had quite a few visitors, some for charitable causes and others to listen to me explain how I manage (very loosely!) my rewilding, nature driven garden.

It seemed only polite to spruce the place up for guests, as I would the house, but as I fretted about potential twisted ankles on uneven steps, bramble scratches and nettle stings, my garden carried on oblivious to the fuss. In just two weeks, the single flowered, pollen beetle friendly roses went over but in recompense the Buddleja, beloved by honey bees, began to bloom.

The nettle leaved bellflower, a beautiful hedge bottom native, drooped and turned disappointingly brown, but the purple loosestrife’s attention grabbing vivid cerise flowers suddenly began to open and towered above the pond, while the delicate fluffy meadowsweet flowers remained like cream candyfloss cones around the margins and my meadow lawn became a haze of dancing wild carrot flowers.

The first visitors saw very little wildlife as the July weather imitated mid November with leaden skies and heavy rain and all my garden’s wild residents stayed in bed for the day. The second set were treated to perfect weather for walking around outside, not too hot and too cold, but too cloudy for many insects to be visibly active. The third group were professional designers and gardeners, so much more interested in what was growing than the wildlife it satisfies; but today as I sit in the shade sheltering from the now fierce heat of the sun, the insects have decided that the weather is much more to their liking and are putting in an appearance just for me.

There are meadow brown, ringlet, gatekeeper, red admiral, comma and both large and small white butterflies, honey, bumble, carder and solitary bees in several sizes, green, black and brown beetles whose names I don’t know, several types of hover fly and a grasshopper jumped up out of the long grass onto my shoulder to surprise me and make sure I knew he was there.

I enjoyed sharing my wild garden with human visitors, although I do wish the insect residents had been more noticeable for them. But that’s the thing about nature, it doesn’t work to our well planned timetable of events, it responds only to nature’s.

Perhaps the most important aspect of a wild garden is for the gardener to have more patience!



Magic

I’ve wanted to visit Knepp Wildland since I first heard about it and late last year I was lucky enough to be able to buy the last available ticket for an afternoon visit this spring.

I’d booked a ‘safari’ and together with other lucky visitors, bumped along tracks through former arable fields in an Austrian ex army Pinzgauer,. The Serengeti it isn’t, no exotic animals to look out for, tamworth pigs and long horned cattle stand in for wild boar and long extinct aurochs and the beaver pair are as yet confined within a compound.

What is there is a tantalizing insight into the magic our own British landscape can perform if only we allow it to.

Every thicket seemed to hide a nightingale in full and glorious song, defending his territory against all the other nightingales, there were in fact forty singing males the day I visited.

White storks sailed overhead while more sat on eggs and young in nests, clearly visible despite the densely foliaged crowns of the mature oaks which held them.

Obviously growing there for hundreds of years before the estate was rewilded, the oaks have now taken on a new lease of life and the acorns not devoured by the pigs are able to germinate. Young oaks are growing well within the protective embrace of brambles, blackthorn and wild roses. The saying ‘the thorn is the mother of the oak’ suddenly made obvious sense.


But what has my exciting day out got to do with our gardens? Well just about everything.

My garden sits within its own landscape as all our gardens do. Each unique but sharing a common ability, to be a thriving, functioning ecosystem able to perform its own particular version of nature’s magic.

I did once have a nightingale perch briefly in the big birch tree in my garden, if he was to return, set up a territory and stay to sing, that would indeed be powerful magic.


In the wild wood

In a corner of my garden is a group of two apple trees and a once coppiced hazel all overshadowed by a neighbouring hornbeam. Beneath them is a ground covering of plants, developed over years by previous gardeners and lately my attempts to introduce native woodland bulbs, wild garlic, bluebells, snowdrops and wood anemone. It is particularly beautiful through winter and spring and the plants are so happy there that they have spread and live together in happy equilibrium. As a densely shaded border it works very well but although I call this patch my wood, in reality it is nothing like the wild wood where we walk the dog and where I’ve found some real treasures.

On the edges of a managed plantation, there are old hazel coppices, native broadleaf trees, fallen and standing dead wood and open bridleways where the sunlight sweeps in and changes the nature of the space so that unexpected plants have seeded themselves.

Felted leaved Verbascum stand like interlopers at the top of a bank and coltsfoot cluster in the margins of a track behind which swathes of Euphorbia drift from the open sun to the edges of the canopy. Cowslips dot themselves along the paths with lady smock in the damper patches and unfurling ferns are beginning to show through the huge carpets of wild garlic, now studded with shiny white stars taking turns to cover the floor with the sky blue of the bluebells.

Always on the lookout for new and interesting plants, this week’s walk revealed herb paris in flower and toothwort flowers emerging from the base of an old sycamore. Many dog walkers would pass these treasures by without a second glance and perhaps that’s not a bad thing, it’s the lack of human interference which has allowed them to find a safe home, long may that continue in the wild wood.

A wilder way to garden

The first flowers of spring are beginning to bloom and with them insects appear as if by magic.

The drone of bees, not heard for months, is once more part of our gardens’ soundscape. The birds sing out to defend territory and find a mate, the next generation relies on them finding a safe place to nest and the ability to find enough food to raise a brood.

The more we become involved with the lives of the creatures with which we share our gardens, the more we learn about the relationships between the plants and animals in the wider landscape and how our own individual gardens fit into the bigger picture.

As biodiversity losses continue, rewilding has become a term we’ve all heard of, but how many of us understand what it means and how it can relate to our own gardens?

There’s a very good book called ‘Rewilding’ by Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe which explains the concept really clearly and after I’d read it one phrase stayed with me. Rewilding is ...‘the planned practise of restoring trophic complexity and natural dynamics to set ecosystems on a trajectory to recovery.’

As gardeners we’re unfamiliar with the technical terms, but we can see the basics of trophic complexity in our gardens every day. The top predators in my garden are the sparrowhawk and tawny owl, they prey on the smaller birds, mice, frogs etc which eat insects, caterpillars, beetles and worms which in turn will have munched on the plants.

Holes and jagged edges of leaves in our borders are not a cause for alarm, they are evidence of a functioning ecosystem where the sun’s energy is transformed by plants into the fabric of their stems, leaves and seeds which are then eaten by animals to build their own bodies and the bodies of the larger animals which in turn feed on them.

The average garden might not be particularly complex but we can improve that by allowing them to be more naturally dynamic. By watching and learning, accepting the fact that we don’t always know best, if plants want to pop up where we didn’t plant them, it means that they prefer it there. If the perfectly striped lawn of our imagination bears no relationship to our own grassy patch in which the dandelions and daisies flourish, rejoice in them, they feed the insects which the birds depend on.

There is a wilder way to garden, we just need to let it happen.

A little light relief

Cold grey days and long dark nights can easily lead to mid winter melancholy and I’m fortunate not to be affected by them as some are, the birds in my garden cheer me up during daylight hours, their songs may be all about territorial and breeding rights but to my human ears they are just joyful.

However it’s too cold to be out in my garden for hours at a time and the long evenings find me searching out tv programmes filmed in sunny parts of the world, particularly those involving flower filled landscapes. When I decide I can’t justify spending another hour watching Monty’s tour of Crete, lovely as it is, I turn to my own very amateur attempts to capture last summer’s flowers from my garden.

Every summer I spend some time trying to capture the essence of my garden, as a visual reminder of the intensity of light, vibrancy and range of colour and incredible growth of so many plants all thriving together. It’s a little light relief from the short dull days of winter and a reminder of the joys to come, just a few short months away.

Giving back


There’s a new diary on my desk, its months, weeks and days yet to be filled.

Our gardens follow nature’s calendar and that is full of a whole year’s worth of opportunities for us to help a struggling natural world, by giving back as much and as often as we can.

Indigenous peoples understand the reciprocal arrangement with nature which, over recent years, we have lost, and which our traditional farming methods used to follow. Leaving fields fallow to aid the soil’s recovery, putting sick animals in the ‘hospital’ field, full of medicinal herbs on which they grazed to aid their healing. Industrial farming, and the widespread use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides in our fields and gardens, have, together with habitat loss, decimated once common species.

As regenerative farming becomes more accepted and hopefully more widespread, let’s embrace regenerative gardening too. The habitats we can restore individually, can together form wildlife corridors through which species can travel, between our gardens and on to larger areas of woodland, meadows and wetlands.

Leaving our lawns to grow long and the ‘weeds’ within them to flower, provides nectar and pollen to a wide range of insects which pollinate our fruit and vegetables and then themselves become food for birds. We save time, effort and carbon by not mowing and the grass roots probe deeper into the soil, creating better drainage and sequestering more carbon. We know trees are essential in our fight against climate change, so too are hedges and how much more they offer us than a boring fence.

The wildlife with which I share my garden gives me just as much pleasure as the plants themselves, and while many of these are quietly waiting out the winter below ground, some are at their beautiful best. Evergreen Mahonia with its lily of the valley scented flowers is the best source of nectar for any queen bumble bee brought out of hibernation by a mild spell. Hamamelis and Sarcococca have thin spidery flowers but they are surprisingly scented too. Viburnum tinus may be very ordinary most of the year, but is a mass of flower through the darkest days and as for Helleborus, there are few flowers more beautiful in any season.

The photographs decorating my diary show me what will be in flower each month of the coming year and by them I will write a note to myself, to reciprocate, say thank you and give back to nature in any way I can.


Looking forward to next year already

We marked the seasonal change into autumn in the small hours of this morning, by putting our clocks back. Nature does things its own way and each species in our gardens reacts in their own time to the falling light levels and colder night temperatures.

The trees bearing berries time them perfectly to be ripe and ready for the migrating birds as well as our resident ones, and while some plants may be showing only slight changes to the colour of their leaves, there are ornamental grasses at their very best, flowering beautifully, as if they had all the time in the world to set seed.

In my garden the stag’s horn sumach takes centre stage, it’s angular branches of flaming leaves, just like the antlers of its name sakes, soon to be strutting their stuff and impressing the hinds in the forest over the river.

We gardeners might see this time of year as one of decay, the falling away of life, nature in the garden hunkering down to brave out the cold dark winter. But just like the stag giving his all to pass on his genes, our garden plants, from the most exuberant and showy ornamental ones to the humble hawthorn in the hedge, are all doing the same. They are spreading their seeds, not just by feeding the birds but having them flown elsewhere, to germinate in new territory, along with their own little dose of fertilizer.

Isn’t nature wonderful, and even on a wet and windy day like today, just look out of the window at the garden and look forward to next year, your garden’s plants already have!

First thing in the morning

I’m so looking forward to my first cuppa of the day out in my garden this week, very unusually for me, I’m getting up early to spend longer with the birds and bees, enjoy the morning with them and share the beginning of the day nature’s way.

I place my chair facing east and as the sun rises through the filter of the birch tree branches, the strands of mist lying along the valley slowly evaporate, and the dew clinging to every leaf, flower and orb spider’s web magically disappears as the day begins to warm. The honey bees make the most of the Persicaria, so full of nectar early in the day that there are dozens of them moving methodically from flower to flower, no time to waste in gathering as much food as possible for the hive. They must know, as I do, that this last blast of summer can’t possibly last and we must all take pleasure in it while we can.

Autumn has been dropping heavy hints that despite the sun’s heat, it is here. The plums that ripened in august are frozen or made into jelly, the apples are beginning to fall now and most of my meadow lawn has been cut, but I’m hanging on to a small area as long as the weather holds before taking away the last refuge of the grasshoppers. There are the first signs of leaves turning and the grasses are coming into their own, their flower heads are spectacular, and as I’m learning this week, especially so first thing in the morning.

'Scentsational'

As mid summer approaches I keep watch for the flowers to open on a honeysuckle which weaves through and over the beech hedge just outside the back door. It’s not as pretty as many, with egg yellow flowers turning to white, but the scent is a lingering mix of coconut and mango, exotic, sweet and intoxicating.

So many plants in our gardens are scented, not intended for our enjoyment at all, but for very practical reasons. The scent of flowers is produced by aromatic oils evaporating as they are warmed by the sun with the purpose of attracting pollinating insects. Leaves may be scented as a defense mechanism against sap sucking insects or herbivores, but we interpret and enjoy them in our own way.

The Philadlephus in my garden is too sweet and floral for me to be reminded of oranges, which its common name of mock orange would have me think, but there is a thyme in a pot by a bench which is at a perfect height for running my hand through to pick up the strongest scent of sweet oranges. The roses have a wide range of aromas, from the sharpness of sherbet lemons through old fashioned face powder to very disappointingly non-existent.

The most unusual scent in my garden this summer is from a night scented stock, the seeds of which I grew from a packet free with a magazine. By day it has no smell at all but as the light fades it fills the evening air around it with warm cinnamon and cloves. Nearby I can smell aniseed from the fennel and the rich and complex aroma of a good curry from Helichrysum, from which it gets its common name of curry plant,. The unexpectedly rich and spicy scented Buddleia we all know to be brilliant for nectar feeding butterflies, but it must be full of pollen too, a good deep sniff of it is guaranteed to make me sneeze, and then there is the lavender, well known for the many properties of its scent and loved by almost everyone, even those whose gardens are totally unsuitable for it.

From the fruit bowl to the spice rack and childhood memories of granny’s Eau de Cologne, the scents of our garden plants can take us around the world and back again. Simply scentsational.

Wild at heart

The longer I live with my garden the more I appreciate how very important it is that I just leave it to carry on living its best life without my interference. Apart from the catmint which is a wonderful bee magnet, all the bumblebee activity is centred on the plants which have self sown and made themselves at home here. Bush vetch, red valerian and aquilegia romp around the place as if they own it and the bees flock to them. Ivy creeps around softening the bare legs of the hedge and gently enveloping my sleeping fox. The wild and rudely named stinking Iris, is far from smelly to me and is perfect in form and colour and the oxe eye daisies, bigger versions of everyone's favourite diminutive lawn weed, turn my lawn into a meadow.

My garden has a wild heart and I love it all the more for that.

No Mow May

May, the month when the freshness of spring turns gradually into the fullness of summer, longer daylight hours and warmer temperatures bringing new flowers every day. Birds nesting, bees busily foraging and that Sunday afternoon soundtrack of the neighbours’ petrol mowers drowning out the sounds of nature.

If just for this month all the mowers stayed in the shed, we might all see the flowers I do by leaving my own lawn to grow, dandelions and daisies, buttercups and cowslips, speedwell, selfheal and those unique species of whatever type of soil we each have. Every gardener might be able to spend that grass cutting time just sitting enjoying watching the grass grow and most important of all, ten times the number of vital pollinating insects would have the opportunity to feed from all those lovely wild flowers.

On reflection

The one element in the gardens I design that I feel makes the most impact on the space is water.

Clean, clear, sparkling open water, in whatever form suits the design, is a place for bees to drink, birds to bathe, amphibians to breed, adults to sit by and relax and children to learn about the joys of the natural world.

The ability for it to reflect in the most wonderful way, came home to me in my own garden after I bought a flight of rusty metal geese on long poles which I placed along the edge of the pond. Feeling foolish, I realised their colour blended perfectly with the winter leaves of the beech hedge behind so that they completely disappeared.

Then I looked down into the pond and there they were, sailing gracefully through the sky, reflected perfectly by the water. On reflection, I realised that I couldn’t have placed them anywhere better.



A quick blast of colour

It’s that time of year when we’ve all had enough of winter, this year more so than most. We know spring is on its way, the birds are noticeably more vocal and the early flowers are out and are very welcome. But it’s still cold and grey, and for most of us, warmer weather and sunshine can’t come quickly enough.

I don’t know why, or if it’s just me, but I find it hard when my garden is mostly brown to imagine it full of the delights of colourful summer flowers. I know they will come again, it’s just a matter of patiently waiting, as humans have always done, for our part of the earth to once more turn its face to the heat of the sun.

Not even a pandemic can stop the seasons, but just to hurry things along a bit I find a quick blast of colour to be very therapeutic and enjoy a quick zip through a few photos taken in summers past.

It's in the genes...

Just like the plants in my borders or the birds in the trees, we all inherit characteristics from our parents, and I’d like to think that my daughter has inherited some of her creative ability from me.

I began my career thirty years ago from a hobby, building on the talents I had, studying and working hard to develop my knowledge and skill. At the age I was when I began my own business, now my daughter is developing her creative talents, in a different way to me, but with the same real passion for the natural world.

She gives new life to discarded objects and rethinks how we might use unwanted items. She recycles, upcycles and repurposes rusty old car parts, turns faded books into wallpaper and planters, makes unfashionable furniture into beautiful additions to a room, finds new uses to outdated fashion, and of course plants feature strongly.

Of course they do, it’s in the genes!

Roses in November

The last week of November, with a heavy dew and trailing mist hanging low over the river, as the sun warmed the morning I thought it would be a good day to have a look around my garden for fungi. It is their time to shine after all, but what struck me most, was just how many plants are still flowering away as if there were insects still on the wing to pollinate them, and there were. Besides small clouds of midges, a fat queen bumblebee was investigating a pile of compost, I guess looking for a place to hibernate, and my honey bees were busily coming in and out of the hive as if it were still early autumn and the first frost still weeks away.

Our climate is changing and the effects are showing in our gardens, but roses and geraniums flowering in November can’t be all that bad can they? Well yes, because there will be irreplaceable losses too.

My garden is dominated by an impressive old birch tree and birch are trees of cold countries, in Britain they’re already at the south end of their range and as our climate warms up there will be long periods of drought with which they will not cope.

Roses in November might look beautiful to us, but so do birch trees, I hate to think of losing one just to have the other.

When the sun shines

When the sun shines at the perfect angle of early autumn there is magic in the garden. We imagine this time of year to be all fire and flying sparks as the wind whips the leaves from their branches, but I love the gentle glow of soft light through transparent leaves. Summer’s colours are leaving us for another year, we should take time to enjoy them while we still can, but it’s not a sad farewell, they will be back next year.

The old apple tree

Outside the front door, over the path and border where the meadow lawn comes up closest to our house, is an old apple tree. I’m grateful to it for its beautiful spring blossom and juicy crisp apples and the flaking bark of its gnarled limbs must provide hiding spaces and shelter for numerous insects and other invertebrates because I sometimes catch sight of the greater spotted woodpecker on one of his visits when he hops up and down the branches poking his beak into the nooks and crannies as he searches for a meal.

There are much easier pickings in the feeders which hang from the branches, peanuts, fat balls, sunflower hearts and nyger seed which the goldfinches love. Out of the kitchen windows there is almost constant movement, blue, great, coal and long tailed tits are happy to join the goldfinches and share, but jackdaws and rooks being far too heavy swing precariously and knock everything to the floor where they’re joined by dunnocks and wood pigeons hoovering up the remains.

Occasionally I see all the birds scatter in panic as the guided missile that’s the sparrowhawk streaks through. He almost always misses, then preening to hide his embarrassment, sits for a while on a branch to recover his composure. Sadly, most birds treat me with the same mistrust and avoidance as the sparrowhawk, but there have been a few magic moments this summer when fledgling goldfinches have overshot the feeders and flown right inside through the open door, too young to have learned to be fearful, they have waited quietly for rescue.

Holding a tiny life in the palms of my hands is a very precious gift and one more reason to be thankful to the old apple tree.

Working from home…..on the garden

This spring and summer have certainly been different haven’t they, and for me very different from what I expected when we went into lockdown. I had thought that my work would really slow down, even dry up altogether and that I’d be spending a lot more time than usual in my own garden. I certainly wasn’t visiting clients for a few months and I’m still restricting site visits, but adding a remote consultation to the services I can offer has certainly been very well received. For many people it’s been the way for them to benefit from my years of experience and knowledge to help them develop their garden while they’ve been at home with the time to get to grips with it. Some have really got on with things and built their gardens themselves, and wonderful jobs they’ve made of them too!

Lockdown has been difficult for us all, but for me, its silver lining has been seeing how nature has thrived and responded to the changes we’ve had to make and the restrictions imposed which for a while kept us at home and off the roads and thereby reduced air pollution. Restricted management by local authorities allowed the grass verges to grow and with them the wildflowers which the insects feed on. With the insects available to feed their young, the birds have done better too, at least in my own garden I can see many more young of a range of species.

I won’t dare to hope that we have learned a lesson and will change the way we mismanage our green spaces and sadly gardens too, but nature’s had a bit of a break from us, and while we’ve spent more time in our gardens hopefully we will have become that little bit more aware of nature all around us, especially where it’s closest to us and where we can help it the most, in our gardens.

Here are some photos of my clients’ and community volunteers own hard work at different stages of development. and each very different in style. The traditional garden surrounded by trees will be wonderful for wildlife. The contemporary garden is only just planted so is in its infancy, but the planting is going to be really good for pollinating insects, and the community space is planted with permanent perennials but the ‘weeds’ which have seeded in between them are left to flower for us to enjoy and be of benefit insects and birds.