Plants

Insects

Mammals

Pond

The outer edge of the beds is starting to take shape. Now we have a much better idea of the dimensions of all four quadrants.

The gardeners have started to form the front edge of the Bauerngarten. This will allow them to level out the beds behind as they are on quite a slope at the moment.

The upper garden is really taking shape. This week the weather has been relatively dry and the gardeners have made real progress. We had to re-bury the monolith. It was too big to get out. 

The fence and posts look great. We are really pleased with these. Now the front of the Bauerngarten is being formed and next it'll be the paths!

The fence continues growing.

The work has started on the fence around the upper garden.

Despite the torrential rain all day, the gardeners have put in 6 beautiful sandstone columns which will be the cornerstones of the fence. It has been muddy and wet work, but they look great. 

The garden works have finally started! We got the planning permission in the summer and now the garden contractor is able to start. Today they have been clearing the stumps left behind when the fallen trees were taken away last December. They are also clearing the paths for access. It is very exciting to see it all beginning. We have set up a wildlife camera to take photos every 30 seconds. That should make a timelapse film of the progress but it is an experiment. We have not done this sort of photography before. This photo taken before the works started shows the view the wildlife camera will have. 

The clearance has changed the aspect quite a bit. It was very overgrown before but now we can see the layout of the garden better and have marked out the possible farmer's garden with string to get an idea of how it will look from the house.

Once we had finally bought the land we made a start clearing up the fallen trees in the back garden. These had probably been lying around since a storm in 2011 - the year before we came here. The large willow on the slope behind the house had some dangerous broken branches which needed to come down. We also had the dry stone wall repaired. 

Winter is a good time to think about the next year in the garden, to check the plans and hopefully get things done in the right order so we don’t forget anything.

We have decided to approach the garden in zones - according to target species and the strategies we need to adopt to encourage them in the garden. This helps to prioritize the plans and have an overview of how things will affect each other. 

We’ll also use this framework to create videos dealing with each strategy and environment. 

We were finally able to buy the land to complete the garden in December 2020. This allows us to create a wildlife garden on a larger scale and we have various projects we would like to develop.

Here are some photos of the garden as it is now.

The garden has several micro-climates which will favour different species and habitats. The front garden is very sunny and in places gets quite dry. We hope to have a rockery at the front and a wildlife flower meadow. The rockery and dry stone walls will be good for lizards and snakes, etc.

The terrace is shaded by the field maple and will allow a bed of shade-loving plants. At the front of the house we already have a thistle garden for goldfinches and we are developing a poisonous plant bed - just out of interest!

The dry stone wall stretches the whole length of the garden. It is rather overgrown and will need some quite major repairs in some places.

The huge leylandii hedge takes up a lot of space below the terrace so we would like to remove it.

In the lower back garden we hope to create a wildlife pond and leave long grass for amphibians.

In the upper back garden, we can see the outline of what might have been a vegetable garden, so it would be fun to re-create this. The enclosed cottage garden will have lots of nectar-producing plants as well as vegetables.

Behind the cottage garden we will plant some fruit trees and a wildflower meadow. The last corner of the garden at the top will be a caterpillar garden with lots of sorrel and red clover, etc. foodplants of some rare species we hope to encourage back into the garden.

The fence will be replaced in some parts with a bird friendly hedge of native shrubs, and plenty of berries in the winter.

Things will certainly change or be added to as we go along but it has been good to think about the process.