is wetter better?

The seriously wet July has been a mixed blessing in the garden. Most of the plants that are supposed to be there are doing OK. Some that aren't, like fat hen and the distinctly inedible-looking prickly lettuce are doing spectacularly.




Another odd development is that people are leaving bread in the garden. Mostly it sits around going soggy before any wildlife takes an interest in it. But it's nice that people are contributing...

FuFWiG Mansions - open to residents

At last we have a habitat tower of sorts - one tier short as someone has made off with one of our pallets!

There are still "slots" available within it if anyone would like to contribute.

Mindful of the requirements of stag beetle, we have also installed some interred decaying wood (a tree stump and railway sleeper) for extra habitat goodness.

broadening the habitat pallet

Paolo has suggested a more achievable habitat tower design - using discarded pallets, like this one shown at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show three years ago this week.

Well, we have the pallets, but we could still do with the following to put within them:

• any sort of untreated dead wood, e.g. pruned branches, logs
• terracotta plant pots or (even better) pipe sections
• those sorts of bricks with holes in them (I'm sure there's a technical term)
• bamboo canes and other tube-like woody plant stems
• straw
• corrugated cardboard
• ivy plants

We will install all this on the morning of next Saturday (11 July) between 10 and 12, i.e. before our Summer Fun Day - any help and/or loan of tools is appreciated!

never say die!

Despite the prolonged warm dry spell, several of the hedging plants I'd given up on are showing some regrowth.

Also doing surprisingly well are flowers from the "wildflower mix" sown in spring. I'm not sure if the likes of cornflower, field poppy and marigold would naturally be found in a shady, nutrient-rich spot like FuFWiG, but they are a welcome dash of colour anyway.

There are also a number of ladybirds, though whether they are the invasive harlequins is hard to tell as these come in a perplexingly wide range of coloration. Could we unwittingly be providing habitat for the bad guys?

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.