Treading Softly - Environmentally considerate living in a rural english home and garden
Wildlife features
- Numerous log and twig piles in various states of decay to attract and accommodate various insects and beetles.
- Beetle bank to attract and accommodate various insects and beetles .
- Managed wildflower "lot" (10 x 10 metres)
featuring 30 wild flowers.
- Mixed Grass meadow (120 x 30 metres)
featuring various grasses and wildflowers.
- Mixed hedgerow (120 metres), planted 1995, consists of Hazel, Hawthorn, Guelder Rose, Blackthorn, Crab Apple, Maple. It typically accommodates 10 bird-built nests a season.
- Laid Hedgerow (130 metres)
featuring mature trees – oak, ash, and maple.
- 10 x wooden bird-nesting boxes (some home-made), 1 x sparrow terrace, 2 x woven roosting baskets.
- Bird tables and bird feeders.
- Three bird baths on ground and on pedestal.
- Two hedgehog boxes.
- One bumblebee nest ‘pot’.
- Insect ‘straws’ against some walls.
- Insect ‘city’ – wood, logs, stones, rocks, tiles, bricks.
- Clusters of rotting wood for insect shelter and food.
- Orchard and individual fruit trees - Apple, crab apple, wild rose, plum, pear, damson, hazel trees as food sources.
- Herb garden – especially attractive for meadow butterflies.
- Plants attractive for bees include Ceanothus, Thyme, Lavender, Hebe, Candytuft, Escallonia, Salvia, Pyracanthus and Broom.
- Carpets and old sheet fence laid on ground.
Provide for shelter and warmth for voles, snakes, mice.
- Ant nests in lawns.
- 100 metres of tall hedgerow. Dead elms (which died from Dutch Elm disease) left standing.
- Since 1994 we have planted 16 trees in the meadow. 7 x Maples, Oak, 2 x Beech, Ash, 2 x Crabapple, Pear, Plum, Pussy Willow, one for each year of our custody.
- Lawn grass left long under apple trees so apples have a soft fall and can be left in the longer grass for the birds (Blackbird, Thrush, Fieldfare) to eat in autumn and winter.
- Lawns are wholly natural and include celandines, daisies, black meddick, speedwell, violets (alba and sweet) and a host of other non-grass plants.