few April showers, but some May flowers

It's now late May and the wildlife garden is coming to life - most of it, anyway. A lot of the hawthorns in the "hedge" appear to have died. The spring has been dry, but most other things have pulled through, which makes me wonder if it was a dodgy batch - or perhaps hawthorns are just more vulnerable.

Apart from that, we have blackbirds nesting in the dense foliage of one of the lime pollards, and an interesting variety of annuals popping up in the sunnier ground at the front, including dovesfoot cranesbill and black medick. We're pulling out a lot of the mercury though, otherwise it'll just smother everything else.

Next goals are the logpile and habitat tower. The latter seem very trendy right now, even featuring at last week's Chelsea Flower Show, at Ark Design Management's Future Nature show garden (pictured). I don't think we'll be doing anything on quite that scale...

I'll have some of those

An eye-catching centrepiece of the RHS "Greener Gardening" Show last week was this display of "habitat towers" by the Trust for Urban Ecology. These allow a variety of wildlife habitats in a confined space, and being made of reclaimed wood, which eventually breaks down in the soil, they're pretty green themselves - as well as making quite an architectural statement while they're up.

Some day we'll have them at FuFWiG - watch this space!

A helping hand for the hedge

Okay, it's not very pretty, but I'm grateful to Neil Manning of Hammersmith & Fulham Parks Dept and his contractors for putting up this temporary (we hope!) fence, to help the mixed hedge establish unmolested.

Action stations!

Many thanks to those who helped clear up and plant the wildlife garden on Saturday 14 March 2009. In a brisk couple of hours we transplanted the remaining plants from the main site into the (bare) inner corner plot. We also planted a protective hedge of mixed native species, and some native shrubs and wildflower seeds on the main site.

humble origins

Hello and welcome to the Fulham Fields Wildlife Garden blog.

We're still at the "before" stage, as you can see from the images here - although we are almost ready to begin planting.

Stay tuned!