Towards the end of summer

It feels like the sunshine has only just appeared, but for many plants and animals the summer is already over. Some of our flowers are coming to the end of their flowering season and annuals such as the pot marigolds are beginning to look a little past their best!

We won't be cutting many of the dead stems down as insects such as ladybirds and lacewings use these for hibernating in. Also many of the plants' seedheads will be providing food for animals for a while to come yet!

The pond is the only place where we will remove most of the dead vegetation and this is because we don't want too much of it falling into the pond. Too much rotting vegetation causes the pond to become depleted of oxygen, which isn't good news for the pond animals.

During August it has been more difficult to see the birds as many of them go through their moult. However this period has nearly past and we are starting to see the wrens and dunnocks looking for food again in our flower beds.

Pond comes to life

The pond is starting to come to life. It is now full of oxygenating plants which are keeping the water clear and the floating leaved plants are starting to cover the water surface. Dragonflies are flying around the top of it and pond skaters are skimming the surface.

We are now getting a water supply linked from the nearby lake to the pond so that we can always top the pond up as the water level drops. This will be great when we get periods without any rain.

Today a dunnock was spotted using the pond to drink from and a wren was spotted in the flower beds using the denser plants as cover at the end of last week.

Flowers of the garden

These red flowers, on plants called sneezeweed, are proving very popular with bees. These are in the circular raised bed that we built which has been planted with nectar-rich flowers. The purple flower is a cardoon which is like a giant thistle. The flowers of these are also full of nectar but the seeds produced later this year will be eaten by birds.