2011 So-Far

03/09/2011 by nigel.

Greetings and welcome back to the UKGW Blog

Over the course of this year due to other commitments I have been a bit slack with the UKGW blog. So rather than try to make up and remember all of the goings on of the last year in the garden I will mention a few things that have happen and post up the story in pictures.

I decided to take part of the wildlife area and turn it into a micro wildflower meadow..
When I say micro I mean around 5m x 5m..

Even this small area has attracted different insects to the garden that were not normally seen.

We have a lot of the harlequin ladybirds around this year but also quite a few British ladybirds which is nice to see.

The teasel that I planted over a year ago came to life this year, it’s like a natural sculpture.

The pond has seen the usual dragon and damselflies along with the pond skaters and water boatman.

This year also saw a very large population of common newts.

So here it is… The UKGW garden blog in pictures..

February

May

June

July

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So a couple of months on…..

07/06/2009 by nigel.

The pond is now teaming with life, there are all sorts of bugs swimming and living in the pond. Larvae, snails, pond-skaters, water boatman, frogs to name but a few. I need to get out there with an identification book.

The plants are growing nicely. Along with the plants that we purchased I have taken some plants from the fish pond and added those to the wildlife pond one of which being a large Canna lilly.
We have planted some grasses around the edge of the pond, again some of which we purchased and others that were given to us by a friend who had recently removed their pond.

We were also given some lumps of rock that I have used to line the back edge of the pond and also create a small water feature in the guise of a small waterfall. Although the pond was slowly clearing I felt it needed a little water movement. So I fitted a pump only with the sole job to move the water around. The waterfall also helps to oxygenate the water.

All of the plants the we planted in the spring have also sprung to life. Where we had bare twigs we now have lots of green…

There is a noticeable increase in bees and butterflies to the garden along with lots of other bugs. This in-turn has seen an increase in birds.

We have also seen lots of damselflies around the pond.. Mating and laying eggs. And in the recent hot weather we had a visit from two large dragonflies, again these were mating and the female was dipping and laying here eggs.

The lilly in the fish pond has also taken off this year…

Can you spot the fish..?

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ACAP Phase 2 “A Wildlife Pond”

08/04/2009 by nigel.

OK I have to make a confession.. This blog is at the moment a liitle behind hence being in the past tense…

So the wildlife pond is now finished ….

So how did I get to this point?

Firstly I needed to choose the site for the pond… I chose a spot on the right-hand side of the garden just behind the new beech hedge. Next was the shape, for this I just looped some string on the grass and moved the edges around until I found a shape that I liked.

I used an edging tool and cut around the shape of the string and then removed the turf. Looking back I think the turf removal was harder than digging the pond itself!!

Then I started to dig the hole. I did this over two half days with a little tweaking in the evenings after work.. The garden is on a slight slope so I had to build the back end of the pond. I placed a steak in the middle of the pond and from this I extended a long piece of baton out to the edges of the pond. On top of this I placed a level, this enabled me to build all sides of the pond to the same level.

The soil at various depths was very stony. I picked out all of the large stones but the more you picked the more you found. So after removing the largest I covered the inside of the pond with about an inch of sand. The sand was ordered from the local builders merchants at a cost of around £45, this included delivery( for a ton of sand).

I called upon the help of my friend Tom to help me laying the sand, underlay and liner. I’m glad I did as the morning started of with some gusty wind… We had fun holding down the underlay in preparation for the liner. But after some fun and games we had the underlay down and the liner on top ready for some water.
Ebay turned up trumps again for the cheapest place to buy the liner. The seller was also giving away free underlay with all liner so this was a saving of around £50.

I original decided base the pond measurements at around 4metres x 4metres and ordered liner and underlay for this size. This equated to a piece of liner 7metres x 7 meters. This was sufficient for a pond 4m x 4m x 1m deep. The liner cost came in at around £85 including delivery with the above mention free underlay worth £50.

We slowly filled the pond with water moving the liner around as needed.. After the pond was filled and left to settle for a whole we dug a trench all the way around the perimeter at about a spades width and tucked the liner into the trench. As this is As Cheap As Possible project I opted to bring the soil back up to the edge of the liner and seed all of the bare soil around the pond.

The pond ended up being around 3.5m x 3m and around 500mm deep… There will be no fish in this pond… it is purely for wildlife only so it didn’t need to be too deep but has nice easy sloping sides. I have also built a nice shallow cobbled / pebbled area at the front of the pond to enable none pond wildlife to have a drink. As you can see from the photographs although not quite wildlife our cat decided to christen the pond with the first tongue..

We visited the the local world of water centre and brought some marginal plants and importantly some oxygenating plants for the deeper part of the pond. The cobbles and the pebbles came from the local garden centre at a cost of around £20. I will list the pond plants and cost in my next blog entry as I intend to plant some grasses around edge of the pond so will include those details.

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The First of the Trees Arrive

23/03/2009 by nigel.

So the beech and silver birch trees arrive… Its been raining and the ground is soggy and sticky but I need to get out there and plant them as they have been in transit for a couple of days and I need to get the roots back into the ground.. So home from work… a quick cuppa and off we go..

An couple of hours later and the beech hedge is in along with the silver birch.

As the plan is to create an enclose secluded wildlife area the the sides and the end of the garden needed hedges too. So for the end of the garden I decided on a willow hedge this comprised of 20 plants 4-5 ft tall and for the sides a wildlife mix that consisted of privet, willow, dogrose,maple and walnut, these were all around 3-4ft tall and totalled to 33 plants.
I ordered these and again I then had a couple of days rain or shine to get out the back and dig the trenches..

A couple of days later the plants arrived… Some hours later and all of the plants were in..

Ok it looks like a lot of twigs at the moment but a couple of years down the line and hopefully the desired effect should be achieved.

The running total cost so far is £182.83 including postage costs and some hard graft..

Next ACAP Phase two.. A Wildlife Pond..

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Wildlife Garden “ACAP”

17/03/2009 by nigel.

I am embarking on a project to make the garden more wildlife friendly and to be honest look a lot nicer.. At the moment the garden is pretty bare with only a few shrubs and small bushes.

Recently some of our neighbours cut there hedges right back and removed some trees from the gardens, this has appeared to have an impact on the amount of birds visiting the feeders in the garden. So this was one of the motivations to overhaul the garden..

Because of the current financial climate in the UK I decided I would try and do this as cheap as I possibly could and post my findings on this blog to help others make there own wildlife gardens for minimal cost. I have decided to call it my “As Cheap As Project” ACAP for short.

Now I’m no experienced gardener so this is going to be a learning curve for me. So armed with some gardening books and some advice from a few green fingered friends I am kicking off the ACAP with a wildlife section to the garden.
The garden is approximately 80ft in length from the patio and about 32ft wide.
So after a chat with the wife we decided that the bottom third of the garden would become the wild
section.. I would separate this from the rest of the garden with a hedge, leaving a gap in the middle for access. The perimeter of the rest of the section comprises of fence panels and a brick wall, so we decide to hedging all the way round. The hope is that after x amount of years this will turn into a little secluded wildlife haven.

So with an idea for phase one on paper the ACAP begins.

I started by looking at garden centres for shrubs, trees, hedging but these were very expensive. So I turned to the web which ended up at ebay. Ok next where do I start, what plants do I want? So a quick Google on UK wildlife friendly plants gave me an idea of what I wanted. As it was I didn’t even need to do this as an ebay search on wildlife hedging revealed sellers that sold exactly that, a mix of countryside wildlife friendly hedging at a very good price compared with garden centres.

So the first hedge to plant would be the dividing hedge, for this we decided to use beech. The reason we chose this is that it gives pretty much a full time barrier in that the leaves are green in the spring summer and in the autumn winter the leaves turn brown but don’t fall off the tree until the new green ones are about to appear.

So into ebay.. a quick search for Beech .. I purchased 30 4-5ft beech trees for just over £50.00.
These were set to arrive in the next couple of days so I had to get out to the garden and prepare a trench ready for planting. I also came across 3x 8ft silver birch trees for £28.00 including postage so I purchased these too.

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