Terrarium

Always wanted to make one of these..finally got round to it. I went for: coir on top of lava rock, planted with Fittonia albivenis, Orbea variegata, one Davallia fern and some spanish moss.

Photo by Roo Lewis.

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Autumn Leaves

Noting the slow demise of the tulip tree leaf; all collected from the same tree on the same morning. I would love to see it in it’s natural habitat at this time of year, spread across the deciduous forests of East Coast North-America.

Stag Beetle

Coming in from the garden this evening I was amazed to find a stag beetle upside down on my shed desk, legs in the air and struggling to right itself. Though it does suggest I probably ought to clean the place a little more often, I’m pretty pleased to have been sharing dwellings with an endangered species.

Having said this, I’ve no doubt the monstrous beetle wandered in at some point fairly recently; most likely from the large wood pile just by the shed. I stacked the logs during my first Winter at the garden when erecting my firewood log-store, the idea being to slowly work through the wood (left from the initial tree-thinning during the garden landscaping), splitting it to dry out. As it happened I vastly misjudged the amount of wood to get through, and the store filled up before I’d even got through 10% of the logs. Therefore the pile has remained more or less left to its own devices for 3 years.

The other week I saw the tail of a grass snake slip away down through a gap in the stumps, and last year hornets chose a hollow within the logs for their nest. Wrens dart about the pile daily; I often watch them from my desk, speeding from log to log, scouring for insects. This year a pair made their nest at the base of the stack, under a discarded railway sleeper. In fact for such a dim and seemingly stark element in the garden, there’s no greater source of diverse wildlife on the property; a rival even (in conservational terms) perhaps to the pond, although it does support a completely different range of habitat. So I suppose my message to all wildlife enthusiasts and the conservationally inclined with even the smallest of gardens would be stack yourselves some logs. If you’ve no room for a pond, there’s an equally important and engaging environment to be created, and one that requires far less effort too.

Basil

Thought I’d sow basil direct into the large conservatory pot in the house this year.

Today feels like Spring. There’s a haze over the sky and all around birds are calling and moving as if all of a sudden taking nest building seriously. There’s a woodpecker tapping furiously in one of the robinias fifty yards away and I’m in a t-shirt. This time last year the magnolias had finished, every tulip was either in full show or going-over, and the garden was fast accelerating into mid spring vigour. This year however, the colour is still yet to arrive. No tulips out and even the early Iris’ haven’t finished flowering yet. Just shows how dramatically our climate can vary. Never been so thankful for hellebores before!

Honeywort

Although invariably a favourite of every other gardener, Cerinthe has only more recently become a plant I enjoy growing. It takes quite a while to get going and only really fills it’s allotted space by early Autumn, but once it has, the long drooping stems pay back their return in abundance – and make an ideal filler in a cut flower mix. I saved a handful of the last stems before composting the now enormous bulk of Medusa-like clumps. The foliage is very similar to that of the Sedums, the small flowers like comfrey or Pulmonaria.

Reminders etc