Bird feeders galore

Over 100 people came to visit the wildlife garden last Saturday to discover more about birds and what they can do to help the birds that live near them. Families took part in bird trails, made bird feeders to take home as well as for the wildlife garden and played some of the bird feeding games that were on offer. The face painting was particularly popular!

It was a great day to be out in the park (though the shower of rain in the afternoon could have stayed away), with plenty of birds on the nearby bird feeder including great tits, blue tits and a great spotted woodpecker.

Spring bulbs

25 people came to help plant bulbs in the wildlife garden this week. Autumn is the best time for planting bulbs and it is really good to know that we were planting things that were not only going to provide some colour in the garden in spring, but that the flowers will be providing early nectar sources for bees.

We put in bluebell and snowdrop bulbs, along with some wood anemone rhizomes. The bulbs were put in under the trees along with red campion plug plants so that during the spring we will have a mix of white, blue and then red flowers. The anemones were put under a different tree, along by a hedge as they don't usually grow with grass and like leaf-rich soil.

Completion of the newt

A group from Kinsbury Manor Day Centre visited the wildlife garden for the second time yesterday. They came to finish the newt sculpture! The newt now has a crest of wild flowers along its back and its eyes and nostrils have been completed with mosaic tiling. It looks great!

The flowers forming its crest are the purple-flowering selfheal and autumn hawkbit, which has yellow flowers. Both of these will withstand people walking on them so the newt will still be accessible to sit and climb onto.

Planting this week

This week sees us planting some bergenias in the front garden; these are plants that are tolerant of shade and will hopefully still bloom well in the dry and shady conditions caused by the nearby London plane trees.

We are also planting some Dog violet plug plants into the sides of the raised bed. The wooden roundels, that make up the sides of the raised bed, came from old children's playground equipment and have holes in their sides where the bolts used to sit. We are going to use these to plant the Dog violets into.