Spring evening

The sun drenched the garden this evening, making this peaceful haven in the middle of London a delight to be in. A Great Crested Grebe paid a visit, as did an unwelcome squirrel. Fortunately, the food was safe, for the moment at least!

Wild moments in the park.

Spring continues to try and do its thing battling with the unpredictable weather.

The Garden looked stunning in the sunshine with plants flowering and trees in blossom.

Spring colour

The Regent's Park/RSPB Wildlife Garden was awash with colour and wildlife today as spring attempted to take hold once again.

Mud mud, glorious mud.

Royal Park staff were joined by RSPB volunteers today to plant reeds in the lake by the Wildlife Garden.

Sadly one volunteer got stuck in the mud but was soon rescued and given a less sticky assignment!

Once the reeds grow over the summer, they will provide cover for an abundance of wildlife.

Spring is taking hold in the Garden with lots of activity from our resident robins, blue and great tits, woodpeckers, coots and of course mallard ducks.

Blossom is also starting to appear on our cherry trees and all the hard work over winter is beginning to pay off.

Volunteers also checked out the garden for a 'Geocache' spot. If you're new to 'geocaching', put simply it's a digital treasure hunt using sat-nav systems. Sounds complicated? It's not! All you need is a handheld GPS unit (like the one in your phone perhaps) and off you go.

Regent's Park is full of 'treasure' - check out www.geocaching.com for more information and join the hunt. You may even find some RSPB collectables if you do!

Talking of treasure, don't forget to visit the tennis cafe next to the RSPB Wildlife Garden. Not only can you rest your heavy legs while sipping a latte, but you can put £1 in the RSPB box and get yourself an RSPB badge.

Led up the garden path!

The Regent's Park Wildlife Garden was closed today while the Park team laid the new pathway through the garden.

The path will allow visitors to get an excellent view of the bird feeders, ponds, flowers and plants without having to stray to far on muddy, rainy days.

The amount of wildlife attracted to the garden continues to rise with finches, woodpeckers, long tail, blue and great tits all visiting with great regularity.

If you are interested in learning more, here are two events for your diary:

24th April Guided walk around the Wildlife Garden - 12.30 -1.15pm
Find out more about wildlife gardening and the wildlife that lives in Regent's Park Community Wildlife Garden. To book please phone 020 7935 7430. The meeting point will be given on booking.

26th April Pots, plants and paints
Community Wildlife Garden 11.30am - 3.30pm
Family event - plant your own seeds, make recycled flower pots and decorate your pots with paint. A bumblebee trail will be running at 12pm and 2pm. 020 7935 7430 for more information.

If you can't make either of those dates, check this site for more events throughout the year.

Preparing for Spring!

Gill and Jill, two RSPB volunteers worked hard today preparing the beds for the spring. You can also see the newt in the background with further protection added to keep the pigeons off!

Darren was busy adding mulch to the flower-beds.

The signs of Spring continue - many of the trees are now budding, the birds are busy nesting and another array of daffodils have flowered.

The Blue Tits and Great Tits continue to use the feeders and the Woodpecker pops in now and again too.

If you're planning to visit the garden, there is a cafe less than a minute away, so grab a cuppa, buy an RSPB badge then make your way to the Garden and wait patiently for the wildlife to arrive!

Seeding the Newt!

After a damp winter and spring, the Newt has been reseeded and hopefully will be sprouting soon.....in the meantime it's out of bounds to both visitors and pigeons! The rest of the garden however is still open for all to enjoy.

Birds on the seed feeder

The photos above of a robin, and blue tit and great tit on the seed feeder were taken by one of the garden volunteers, Darren, today. The feeders are still proving popular and one of the nest boxes looks like it is being explored as a potential home by blue tits. See the photos below - also taken by Darren.

Blue tit exploring the nest box in the wildlife garden

Signs of spring

This time of year, look out for frog spawn in ponds and other water bodies. It's warm enough now for frogs to be active after their winter hibernation and laying their eggs or spawn in water. Last week, frog spawn appeared in our pond in the wildlife garden so excitingly in only its first full spring, there will be tadpoles swimming around in it.

Birds have been collecting twigs and leaves for their nests for a couple of weeks now. Different bird species lay their eggs at different times within spring, timed so the baby birds have the best chance of survival. The herons in the park have been on their nests since January. Blue tits on the other hand lay their eggs in late April or early May in order that the chicks hatch when there are most caterpillars around to feed them.

Beams in the wildlife garden

Two giant oak beams were lifted into place to finish the entrance to the wildlife garden. They have come all the way from some fallen down trees in Richmond Park in southwest London.

The garden is coming to life again now, but the recent frosts have slowed the growth of the new shoots. However the warm weather due towards the end of this week should help them along. This is one of the best times to look for birds in the park as they are singing loudly and showing themselves off. As the leaves aren't on the trees, they can be seen that much easier.

The garden is open all year round to the public during daylight hours. It is located off York Bridge and is adjacent to the tennis courts.

Big Schools Birdwatch

Over the last 2 weeks, The International Community School has been carrying out the Big Schools Birdwatch in the wildlife garden. They saw 4 blue tits, 3 great tits, 2 jays, 3 carrion crows, 2 wood pigeons and 2 blackbirds.

These results go into the large pool of data that the RSPB has collected over the last 2 weeks not only from schools carrying out the birdwatch in their schoolgrounds or local park, but from the hundreds of thousands of people across the country who send in results from their gardens.

The Big Garden Birdwatch and Big Schools Birdwatch have now collected over 25 years worth of data, identifying trends such as the decline in house sparrow numbers in London.

Winter morning in the wildlife garden

The garden took on a white look last week when we had several frosts. The pond was frozen over but as it is 80cm in depth it won't freeze all the way down, not with the milder winters we get in south east England. As you can see from the photo we have left seed heads for food for birds and kep some of the old summer plant cover for insects to shelter in over the winter.

Community Wildlife Garden wins Westminster in Bloom Award

More digging...

On Saturday morning we started digging out 3 new beds, all about the same size. These will be planted with wildlife-friendly shrubs and trees such as berberis, hazel and dog rose.

They are located between the seating by the pond and the tennis courts and have been placed to break up the view of the tennis courts, much like the trees further along the wildlife garden do.

Weather permitting, the beds will be planted in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately we dug out the beds too late to catch the frosts that we had last week which would have broken the soil down nicely, but we'll keep our fingers crossed for a couple more frosts after this wet weather period!

Bats in the park

Over the last few weeks, bats will have been finding places to hibernate over the winter period. Our bat boxes have been installed in the trees for several weeks now, but it is unikely they will be used this winter. It is known that bat boxes often have to be around for several years before they get used.

Maybe our boxes will be used for a summer home one year. Summer is when bats form their maternity roosts, where the bats have their young and these can be returned to year after year.

We may never know if the boxes have been used. It is illegal to disturb bats so, unlike the bird boxes, we will never be cleaning the bat boxes out!

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.