Magoo's Secret Garden

The Wildlife so far...

2009-06-23T06:28:00.001-07:00

I haven't managed to get pictures of everything that comes in, but here are a few of the visitors we've had. There are a few nests around the garden; blue tits and robins. There are frogs and we even had a baby rabbit this year. I would love to see a hedgehog, but no luck yet despite upside down pots and woodpiles. I could happily lose the slugs and occasional rats and mice. Updated to add this year's bee swarm.

A robin's nest outside the kitchen window:

The Secret Fort

2009-06-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

The next project was the fort which came about as, despite the best efforts of the thorn hedge, the garden was still overlooked. This was mainly because each of the new houses apparently came with a free trampoline. Heads bobbed in and out of view constantly, and the squeak of springs was always to be heard.
So, after measuring the corner with the gap and comparing to the dimensions of the fort, I decided that it would fit(just) at an angle.
So, it arrived and was put together, not by me, and with the help of skateboards and a neighbour who only narrowly missed being permanently pinned between it and the fence; we got it into place with not a millimeter to spare.
The gunnera in front of it and the thorn hedge now almost completely conceal it, and it has become known as the secret fairy castle and is usually full of teasets, plastic fairies and plastic fairy toadstool houses.

Bog garden no.2

2009-06-23T05:12:00.000-07:00

One part of the garden was permanently squelchy as the drainage is terrible and it gets very little sun. So, rather than take the hard option and sort out the drainage, I decided to put another bog garden there, but much bigger this time. So a large hole was dug by himself and immediately filled with water which obligingly fell from the sky.
So, after baling it out, the pond liner was put down, and the compost was added. Lots of bags, it took. Many trips to Woodie's were made. Then, I planted Royal ferns, gunnera, bog rosemary, dogwood and some snake grass I nicked from the first bog garden.
I sank a smallish plastic bucket-type thing into the middle and added water lilies and oxygenating stuff. Then lots of water. Now it has really taken off and it's more a matter of keeping it a bit in check at times.

Bog garden no.1

2009-06-23T03:33:00.000-07:00

The chamomile patch was really nice in the beginning, but then the whole thing kept collapsing sideways as the plants got taller, so it was time for a change. Initially I quite fancied a pond, but then I decided to make a bog garden. It's all bog round this neck of the woods(and woods too), so I thought that if a bog garden was made, things might move in fairly quickly. Behind the bog garden, I planted french and english lavender. In it, I planted cotton grass, snake grass and a couple of things that got eaten immediately and I can't remember what they were called. The frogs moved in before too long, and the lavender attracted loads of bees and butterflies. A birdbath and a hanging bird table brought lots of different types of bird; sparrows, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, siskins, greenfinches, chaffinches and my favourite, goldfinches.

As it was in the beginning

2009-06-23T02:48:00.000-07:00

My first owned home was a tenement flat in Glasgow, so no gardening there but many, many houseplants. The next place had a small, established but boring garden with lots of monoblocking; so there wasn't a lot to be done with it. After that, a house beside a railway line with a paved garden. I did lift a few paving stones and stick in some small trees, but that was the extent of it.
So when the next place, a new house, had a not very enormous garden with absolutely nothing done to it; I didn't really know what to do with it.
There was a big, beautiful field behind which sometimes had horses in it and sometimes cows(who had a tendency to scorn the electric wire and twitchily eat everything I planted). Because the field was so nice, the garden didn't really matter that much. So it was mostly grass, with one ceanothus shrub and a chamomile patch.

A bit boring really, but grand. Then, the farmer sold the field for development and, pretty soon, there was planning permission for over thirty houses to be built in it. Fairly soon after building had begun, planning permission was granted for extensions to the kitchens, bringing the unwanted new houses horribly close.
The houses went up scarily quickly and the lovely, quiet field was transformed into a noisy, dirty nest of builders with their arses hanging out. Once the houses were built, they painted them a vile breastfed-baby's-nappy shade of yellow.
So, it was time to do something with the garden so that there was somewhere nice to sit outside again. The thorn hedge which had always been there was getting quite big, so I added eucalyptus trees and holly bushes for some evergreen screening.
There had always been plenty of wildlife in the field, so I tried to make the garden as wildlife-friendly as I could to attract things in. And as low-maintenance as I could manage. Two years on and it's getting there.