As promised in my report on our June issue of our monthly visit to John’s Garden, I am moving on now to look at his wildlife gardens.
After looking around John’s Garden we followed a grassed pathway with birches to our left and a few other specimen trees to our right such as Acer griseum and Salix britenzis. The path took us up a slope towards large areas of colourful meadow.
In some areas a particular plant takes over giving swathes of colour as below where yellow dominates one place.
By following our mown grass path around and through the meadow we occasionally came across features designed to attract the wildlife such as logpiles and insect hotels. Logpiles are excellent at attracting beetles as well as mammals, amphibians and all sorts of minbeasts, but most importantly of all beetles. such as Violet Ground Beetles which are superb pest controllers. As for Insect Hotels they attract insects, birds, amphibians and mammals who find there shelter food and places to rear their young.
This is a wonderful place for wildlife with well chosen wildflowers and a mix of grasses. In places Yellow Rattle had been sown to reduce the amount tough grass species and let more wildflowers take hold.
greenbenchramblings 