Tag: environment

Finding Hope in the Garden

Despite being the most urban-dwelling of our families, we are still a very outdoorsy family and the garden has always felt like an extension of our home.  The kids love their slide, swings and the little mud kitchen we set up under the pergola on the patio, but our little garden offers so many other opportunities for play, learning and discovery too.

As a child, I remember the delight of picking fresh strawberries from my mum’s garden every June, and I started my own strawberry patch to share that simple joy with my own daughters. I find peas will grow almost anywhere so I plant them everywhere, and the girls love picking them fresh from the pod as a snack. We grow cherry tomatoes in the green house, which our girls also love picking as soon as they turn red. We’ll never be self-sufficient but growing some of our own fruit and vegetables is a great way of teaching our children about food production.

I’ve tried to make our garden as child and wildlife friendly as possible, and we’re always delighted to see bees bumbling and butterflies fluttering around the garden, as well as worms wriggling, caterpillars crawling and so many other insects just going about their daily business. At time when there is increasing alarm about the decline of insects, I like to feel we are doing our bit to help the insect population, offering them food, water and shelter, and my kids already understand that we need pollinators if we want to keep eating so many of their favourite foods like strawberries, raspberries and apples. My kids often help filling up the little trays of water we leave out for insects and birds in hot weather, as well as the bird feeders, combining their scooping and pouring skills with another lesson in taking care of nature. We’ve had lots of butterflies in the garden this year from small whites nibbling my kale and red admirals feasting on our plums.

Over the years, we’ve had a few hedgehogs visiting the garden much to everyone’s delight. Last year we helped fatten up a little hoglet that found his way in over the summer before he moved on elsewhere for the winter. We haven’t seen any hedgehogs this year, but I hope they’ll find their way in again.

I know that one small garden can’t save the world, but when so many young people are struggling with climate anxiety, our garden reminds us that it’s not as hopeless as the headlines make out, that nature is abundant and generous, and that humans can live in harmony with nature. Our garden is a little sanctuary in the city where we can escape from the hustle and bustle to play, learn and grow in every sense, a place where we can enjoy the sweetness of strawberries, chase butterflies, count bees and marvel at how tiny seeds grow into tall sunflowers. 

Have a lovely week. X

Wildlife Watch in the Garden

One of the highlights of the summer has been watching all the wildlife in our garden, particularly the front garden since we’ve added the pond.

I’d read worrying reports of a lack of insects across the UK leading to chicks starving, but I was so relieved to see our blue tit and sparrow fledglings in the garden in June. In previous years, the blue tits nested in a disused pipe on the side of our house and invariably at least one chick would either shuffle or be pushed off the edge, last year we lost three chicks from either the fall or dehydration before we could return them to the nest, so the birdbox has been a huge success in that regard.

It made my day when I spotted a pair of goldfinches bathing in our pond because we’ve never been able to coax them into our garden before. While chatting with a neighbour, I also spotted a bullfinch in her garden and I’m wondering if I can lure it to our garden just a couple of houses further up.

Many of our most interesting wildlife finds have been in the front garden, my husband spotted a lacewing for the first time and I spent half an hour watching a red damselfly flit around the pond. My husband was beside himself with excitement when he found grasshoppers in our fairly wild front garden, giving him the perfect excuse not to mow the grass for a while longer.

The Kilmarnock Willow was covered in aphids in early summer providing a feast for ladybird larvae, and we also spotted a very hungry and very fat green caterpillar crawling around. None of these insects are particularly rare or unusual but it’s wonderful to see our garden becoming a thriving habitat in an urban environment.

I know one little garden is not enough to stop the rapid decline of so many species across the UK, and I feel so out of sync with my friends and neighbours who are replacing their lawns with artificial grass or paving over front gardens to create driveways, yet I have to try, and I’ll keep trying to create a little safe haven for everything that finds its way here (especially if it eat slugs!). Have a lovely week. X