The Accidental Gardener

I'm really enjoying our garden during this lock down.  Unlike many of my more hard working and diligent friends, and contrary to my upbringing, I am a lazy and useless gardener, which is to say I devote very little time to it in a practical sense.  Consequently much of what grows in our garden has found it's own way there.  I could of course  make a claim that is was all intentional and that I had deliberately set out to create a wildlife friendly natural habitat, but in truth it's just that I don't interfere.   Before going further I should stress that we have a small suburban garden and not a country estate, a couple of proper gardeners with the right equipment would knock it "into shape " in a long weekend if we let them.

There is a saying that a weed is just a flower in the wrong place. Well in my garden if a plant has nice foliage or a pretty flower, then I welcome it, no matter where it came from.  So our current crop of dandelions, daisies, forget-me-nots, primroses, bluebells and pulmonaria are more than fine with me, even though most of them arrived uninvited. 

Added to that we have plants which we did bring in, but have strayed, like the hellebores growing out of cracks in the garden steps,

or the clematis which was supposed to grow up our fence but instead chose to find it's way along the top of our holly hedge

and I really can't remember planting our second lilac which has appeared at the opposite corner of the garden from the original.  Also waiting to come into bloom are loads of different types of geranium or cranesbill for which I deny any responsibility.It seems that nature is a far better gardener than I'll ever be.

Anyway the upshot is that I sit here quietly ignoring the terrible state of the lawn while watching lots of butterflies (orange tips, red admirals, holly blues,

speckled browns,

unidentified whites etc) and bees and frequent visits from garden birds to the feeder, plus of course the dunnocks who hop out from under the hedge when I'm not looking although I did get a hand held shot of one yesterday

As to mammals, our local fox keeps away while I'm out here so we don't see him lately, but the squirrel makes a daily visit to make attempts on the bird feeders.

To be fair, I think we do have an unfair advantage in that over the hedge behind us, we do have a mature churchyard with a variety of very large mature trees and largely undisturbed wildlife habitat.

Our "resident " lime tree that grows adjacent to our hedge is a whopper and in the summer supports a plethora of insect life, although sadly much of it is aphids which drop clouds of sticky goo all over our washing line.  In fact the tree is dropping something on us in every month of the year.  In the winter it's the dead twigs which we seem to get daily.  Some of them I keep for kindling, the rest go in a pile in a corner of the garden for insects to live in.  Then in the spring, as in right now, we get showered with the leaf bud husks as the thousands of leaves burst out.  They're all around my feet and even dropping on my head as I write!  Then come the flowers and the aphids, and then the little whirlygig leaves gently spinning as they drop the fat round seeds to earth, then of course a ton of dead leaves and round we go again.  It's a love-hate relationship.

So there we are, a very modest little garden, little tended, but much loved, especially now we are isolated here.  We could do a lot worse.  Of course I could use all this free time to smarten it all up but I suspect I might regret it.  And even if I did plant it all up neatly, who would look after it when (fingers crossed) we go away cruising aboard Herbie?