Diary Of A Wild Country Garden

We have a visitor and garden companion now. Every time we go into the garden within minutes he is there! Mr. Blackbird has taken to making his arrival by swooping down over my shoulder! A flypast, usually pretty close!  He is a very confident, good looking sleek blackbird and he always proceeds to follow me around the garden. I think he knows that, especially when I am carrying a spade or fork, that digging is going to take place and easy lunch for him!  Lately, he has been joined by Mrs. Blackbird as well. She is just as brave and now both of them will happily work alongside me literally inches from my feet as I go my gardening. I feel like I can reach out and touch those beautiful black glossy feathers but of course, I don't.   I am pretty sure they have a nest together but I think it is deep in the hedge so I am not going looking. We should never disturb nests in any way.  I am just happy that there may be baby blackbirds later.  We are having to be care...

If you walked into my garden you would see a burst of bright yellow sunshine from one shrub in particular.  Yet the forsythia shrub isn't one that fills most gardeners' hearts with delight. It is so very common and for much of the year is simply a green shrub. However, for me, it signifies one of the joys of Spring. It never fails, it has beautiful bright yellow blooms on bare branches, it lives happily and healthily with little attention from me in our mixed hedge alongside a lot of competition for food and water, yet it has never become a thug in the garden.  All I need to do is to prune it once a year immediately after flowering and for the rest of the year, I pretty much forget about it.  Why do I grow Forsythia? I have one forsythia we inherited with the garden and one we planted from my Mum's garden.    Well for the few weeks of that bright yellow bloom, I just love it and it shines out so much at this time of year, a beautiful burst of sunshin...

I am worried when I see and hear hedges being cut and trimmed in Springtime. This is the peak time for birds to be nesting and hedges are often filled with nests, even if we cannot see them all.  So why do some people cut hedges down in Spring when birds are nesting?  We have a mixed native hedge in our garden and frequently birds nest in it. Our neighbors have hedges too so it's a good area for birds to travel along and is always busy in the Spring as they establish territory and build nests and rear their young. It is a pleasure to see them singing their hearts out wooing a mate, defending territory and gathering nest-building materials. Then, if we are lucky to see the baby fledglings and parents feeding them in our garden.  We recorded blackbirds nesting in our garden one year as they nested very close to the house and we could take photos without any disturbance. The photos of the birds here are from that page.  Growing up in the countryside I think I alw...