If you’re one of those people who loves scavenging for useful things, or has a pile of interesting odds and ends stashed away for future projects, then you could think about recycling them into a 5 star wildlife hotel.
21.08.2023 - 12:02 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty / Eco Garden
Now that the days are longer and the first flush of spring is over, gardeners all over the country have a chance to step back from frantic seed sowing, transplanting, digging and weeding and carry on gardening at a slower pace over the summer.
It’s an ideal time to look at the bigger picture, and to make room for more wildlife in your garden. It’s possible to buy an amazing array of wildlife homes. You may already have bird and even bat nesting boxes. Or a dry house for a hedgehog to hibernate in, or a dark and damp one for frogs and toads. You may even have bug boxes, insect hotels or a butterfly habitat.
But what if you don’t, and can’t afford to splash out on all that real estate? Perhaps you prefer the DIY approach, or eco-friendly recycling? Or you have a small garden that simply doesn’t have the space for all these different habitats?
A fun garden project, especially in the summer holidays when the kids can get involved, is to build your own wildlife stack. A wildlife stack has accommodation for lots of different creatures, but it’s designed and built by you out of scrap materials. It can be as big or as small as you like, and makes a really attractive garden feature that doesn’t need to be hidden away.
The first step is to collect your building materials. Keep an eye out for old pallets you can rescue, pieces of wood, old tiles and bricks – particularly the ones with holes in. If you have a pile of unused terracotta pots, then find those. Broken ones will be fine as well, but be careful of any sharp edges.
Find a flat area (or level off a space) on which to build your stack. The ‘ground floor’ is for amphibians and reptiles. Pile up pebbles, tiles, and stones from the garden to provide shady nooks and crannies they can
If you’re one of those people who loves scavenging for useful things, or has a pile of interesting odds and ends stashed away for future projects, then you could think about recycling them into a 5 star wildlife hotel.
Whether you made a New Year’s resolution to cut your carbon footprint, or the credit crunch is putting pressure on your food budget, now is the perfect time to try growing some of your own vegetables. You don’t need a lot of space, or expensive kit, to get started – and it doesn’t need to take up a lot of your time.
If there’s one thing that makes gardeners gnash their teeth with frustration, it’s watching their favourite plants being eaten by pests. We’ve moved on from the ‘any bug is a bad bug’ mentality, and many chemical controls are being removed from sale amid safety fears, but this doesn’t mean that we have to abandon hope of an attractive and productive garden.
A lot of new gardening and plant books have landed on my mat this spring, and I need to up my book reviewing game! I like to do them justice, and spend some time reading them before I write a review, so that does create a bit of a backlog. Right at the time when the garden is demanding my attention. Anyway, the book that has found itself at the top of the list is one that really encompasses the gardening zeitgeist – The Community Gardening Handbook, by Ben Raskin. I looked him up, and he has impeccable credentials. He’s currently Head of Horticulture for the Soil Association; prior experiences include working for Garden Organic, running a walled garden and being a Horticultural Advisor for the Community Farm near Bristol.
Plastic bottles are everywhere these days, even floating around in the oceans. Fortunately for the environment, recycling facilities are improving (here in the UK at least) but a lot of plastic bottles still end up in landfill, where they just don’t break down. If you would like to give your plastic bottles a new lease of life once they’re empty, and save money too, then try recycling them into something useful for the garden.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (also called the Doomsday vault) in Norway was officially opened in February 2008. During the 3 months prior to the grand opening, engineers pumped refrigerated air into the vault to bring its temperature down from a chilly -5°C to an arctic -18°C.
It is one of the big ironies of gardening that the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers we use to keep our lawns green make them one of the least ‘green’ areas of the garden. Many gardeners put a lot of effort into maintaining their lawns, and this diligence can be a real asset if you want to go green, because it requires a fair amount of work to keep your lawn in top-notch condition using organic methods. The good news is that a more relaxed approach rewards you with a beautiful, wildlife-friendly lawn.
One of the hottest gardening topics is how to turn your garden into a wildlife haven. Gardens are seen as a habitat of last resort for many hard-pressed species. Wildlife friendly products abound and you can buy homes suitable for any creature.
Organic gardeners aim to feed the soil, and let a healthy soil take care of the plants. The best way to add fertility to your garden is to make compost, but in most gardens there is never enough compost to go around and there will be times when supplementary feeding is needed.
Climb the cast-iron steps to the roof garden at the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC) and you can almost forget that you’re in the heart of the city. Just 30 by 6 metres, the garden manages to fill every vista and the breeze through the trees drowns out all but the loudest city noises.
There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.
In Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs I talk about the journeys plants have made with us – crisscrossing the globe and leaving Earth entirely for missions in space.