Everything I've Done to Make This Garden Better for Wildlife

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Wildergy Garden. And in this video I am back where a couple of videos ago on the channel I created a little bit of a walk around tour of this place and explained exactly what I was going to be doing to make this garden better for wildlife. So if you haven't seen that video, go back to the home page and go a couple of videos back, you'll see it on the channel and you can watch that before I show you today's video which is a tour of the garden now that we've finished all the works. I'm going to run you through all the features that we've put in and hopefully explain a few more that are yet to come in future projects. So let's go take a look. So now that you've seen the first video or the before video, you will remember, or hopefully you might remember, this was once a gated access and the clients wanted to change this so that it was a bit easier to head straight to the front door from the driveway area and sort of close this up. It was a bit of an odd angle, this was in kind of the corner of the drive, so we took out the existing gate posts and the existing pathway and we now have filled the gap with three lovely variegated hollies which add a nice bit of foliage, holly, evergreen as you know, and these should hopefully still flower and bury just like the normal holly. The evergreens are not my personal favorite, sorry the variegated foliage isn't my personal favorite. I love holly as a plant, I are still going to hopefully flower and bury just the same as the native Ilex. So yeah and through there we're going to go and take a look. So let's go back out and round so that I can show you the new entrance that we've put in. There's a little bit of mesh that the customers put down there, that's not how I'd normally finish a job, but that's to keep the dog in, Charlie the dog, who is a lovely dog who's been keeping us company while we've been carrying out these works. So yes, put a nice little five bar gate in here with some new posts and it is a simple mechanism, lift that up and you can kick it open with your foot. So if you've got a few plant pots or a phone in one hand like I have, then it's a nice easy mechanism to open. So yes and then we've used the existing paving which you may remember, again if you haven't seen that video go back and check it out, but we had an extra row of slabs along there so the clients wanted to reduce the area of patio because they don't really sit out here too much, it's more like a thoroughfare. So we stripped up or we ripped up a layer of slabs down that edge and took out all the hardcore underneath, cleaned the slabs off, put down new hardcore in here, concreted these in and have now pointed these slabs and yes that's a rather nice bit of path I think. Looks like it's been here for a long time, so very nice that is and obviously we took up another row of slabs on the inside there you may remember, so the clients have lots of plants that they want to grow on and they can therefore plant them out into this border in time. So that's another little part of the garden that we have put back to nature or what will be beneficial for wildlife by the time it's planted up with all pollinator friendly plants and then we move on to one of the stars of the show which is this herbaceous border. Now this was originally a bit of mown lawn so it was about sort of five feet of mown lawn and then a couple of feet of slabs on this edge as I've just mentioned and we stripped off all the turf, rotovated it all, turned it all over and it's now absolutely to the brim with plants that are very beneficial for wildlife including some of these absolutely delectable irises. Look at these, the colour on that, absolutely stunning. So irises I don't usually plant in a border, the client specifically wanted a few irises so I've got three varieties in here, there's a white one in the middle and a nice kind of two-tone variety down there that we'll have a look at in the moment. I'm not going to walk too much on this bit because I have seeded up to this edge to sort of mark what will be the edge of the mown area so we've kind of reseeded and regraded all of this so the old path you can see came through there to the edge of the patio that's now being put back to lawn. I may have mixed in a few wildflowers in there so yeah I've done a bit of seed bombing and these are the variegated hollies obviously which are going to hopefully fill that gap just there. So yeah we have loads and loads and loads of plants in here, too many to mention really but if I zoom in you can see one of them, one of my favourites, the native foxglove which is just gorgeous, Digitalis purpurea, those are dotted all the way through this border and from this end you can have a bit of a look and they are just looking stunning and yeah you might think actually this is a bit sparsely planted Joel or there's a bit too much soil, the weeds in inverted commas are going to grow through that well yes you could say that but I've planted it in a way that I know these plants you know I've worked with many of these plants for many many many years I've created many herbaceous borders and I know just how much these are going to grow and fill out so I've planted them in a way that they're going to spread hopefully that they just kind of touch each other without creating too many gaps for undesirables shall we say to come in. So we've got loads of things in here we've got hyssop which is a great plant another favourite of mine which oh smells divine that aniseed kind of smell, we've got some verbena benarientis my not my favourite non-native herbaceous perennial which is yeah just drooping a little bit it was a bit dry in the pot so that's going to pick up shortly when this lot gets a good water, we've got echinaceas, we've got salvias, nepetas, all the stuff that we have available on the wildgerrygarden.com online shop so go check it out and look at that an early bumblebee using these nepetas already they have been planted oh now he's gone onto the geranium I'll just twist that up slightly there you go look at that I think he tried to tell me off then I'm going to try and do the same now look no he's not having that so the early bumblebees have been going in and out of foxgloves as we were planting them I've had Alberto my good friend from Spain he's been over he's been staying with me for a few days so he's he's come to help me plant this border doing one of his favourite jobs which is planting a bit like me and Gareth has been helping me as well that early purple bumblebee or sorry early purple early bee early bumblebee is using the nepeta over there again so fantastic to see yes so Gareth and Alberto have been helping me plant this we've got lots of things like this echinops in the middle as well globe thistle so there's a whole eclectic mix and the the clients have put a few of their own plants in here or asked me to plant some so we've we've dropped some of those in we've got this white iris which I was promising to show you so here we go the wind has given it a little bit of a battering in the last few hours but there are fresh flowers going to come out very soon and yeah this is looking really really great I'm really pleased with the finish as is the client um and then this is that other iris which is an absolute beauty look at the colour of that just unbelievable of course there are so many varieties of iris that you can choose from nowadays there are breeders of just irises or growers of just irises uh that provide hundreds and hundreds of options which is just very time consuming if you want it to be um and then down here we have another one of my favorites the erythema boll's mauve of which not this one but the one that's on the end to kind of mirror this one here on this corner which will create a big block that's why I've left this quite open here because in a year within the year or two this will really fill out uh like the big ones I had in my front garden in Essex before we moved um and on on this recently I say on that one over there there was a male brimstone I was very pleased to see which I knew they nected on these plants but very nice to see the brimstone moving in and making the most of this nexus awesome before we'd even swept the patty off so that was very nice to see um and just while I'm in this part of the garden for a moment uh this was as well a bit more kind of border so we we've taken that up and put a bit of a stepping stone or one of the slabs um and then patched in this area so the original paving went from there all the way down this side by a couple of feet so we've actually dug up some of the turf that came out of here has gone back in there to create this little dog leg so that when the clients come out of patio doors they can just come straight out and we've even made a little access for Charlie I'm not sure he's quite used to it yet or happy with it so hopefully he'll learn to love it or grow to love it and which down here we have put three lovely little lavenders we've got some Hidcote and some Munstead two varieties very very good for pollinating insects so they've gone either side of this little footpath so in time this will be a little lavender walk in between so Charlie can nimble through there and go and lie on the grass which is one of his favorite pastimes I've learned and yes there's loads of stuff here we've even got some uh Rebekias, Rebekia Goldstern, we've got the Russian Sage, Perovskia, there's all sorts so it's really looking grand and I'm really pleased with the result of this let me know your thoughts because it is just such a lovely mix of colours obviously it doesn't look quite finished now it doesn't look as it's going to look it's still a little bit sparse but hey that's what it's all about is growing plants to make them fill in in time and creating a really dense herbaceous border packed with plants that are good for pollinating insects which of course this now is so that's the herbaceous border so let's move on shall we to the next part of the garden which was effectively our little kind of entrance way that we made which then turned into a bit of a more permanent entrance way so we've saved a little bit of turf which which came off uh when we stripped off the turf off off the main herbaceous border put that back in here and we've put a new gate in here there was an old laurel that we took out here and we've put a gate in here there were two new posts kept the original trellis cut that back and now fixed that onto these gate posts to make an entrance into what is now the gravel gardens that's kind of look again these gates very easy almost one-handed look he says it is yeah a nice smooth operation on that and that chirping you can hear it's coming from that box of which there are several blue tits at the moment i think they're very few days away from fledging uh they're making a lot of racket at the moment and if i stay on there long enough i'm hoping i'm hopeful that the adult may come back because they've been feeding very regularly i've got some blue tits in two boxes at my house at the moment and they are feeding young as well not fledged yet so yes this area is now the gravel garden which might look like a sea of gravel but it's kind of the intention because the clients want to put a little table and chairs in that corner so this was all paving and an old water feature where the electrics didn't work so it wasn't that great an area and we ripped all that up and put like a limestone base underneath compacted that and then put the gravel on top to create this little herbaceous border type planting but more kind of sparse planting of plants that love this kind of setting so things like the bird's foot trefoil got marjoram we've got um viper's bugloss in here some thymes and look i've even bought them some flowering bird's foot trefoil my favorite wildflower so hopefully with a little bit of luck fingers crossed they may get a common blue butterfly come and lay some eggs on this bird's foot trefoil we shall see i'm sure they'll keep me very well informed um and then we've got a little bit of an alpine border in here the clients had a lot of alpine so we kind of planted these lovely little alpine plants all the way through um which are that's a woolly thyme i love that i love the foliage on that and we've got yeah some really nice little alpines in here which yeah have just sat in there nicely some armiria which is the thrift um yeah thyme some alchemilla mollus at the back so great little area and then there's a few more bits that we've dropped in here so we've got uh some red campion we've got honesty i've got some cow slips a lot of these from the wildger garden online shop themselves and the honesty is just going past its best now but still flowering and yeah we'll have a load of seed and hopefully the idea is that these will just kind of seed freely through the gravel you know the red camping at the back kind of bringing up the rear that's south so that gets a lot of shade in the back there so morning sun comes up so this is an east facing wall um so it will be really nice in um well anytime from now we're expecting a heat wave in the next few days 25 26 degrees for the middle of may which is pretty warm so these lavenders and sage and this herb bed here is going to look really nice and uh yeah start filling out in no time at all uh then we put a little bit of a tracheal sperm and jasminoids or jasminoides which is a bit of a mouthful but a great scented climbing plant that is going to go up and around uh that sort of down pipe a little bit of time on the corner there and yes i'm sure the clients will add to this in time but you know the idea was that they still wanted this as a thorough affair to come through this part of the garden to go out and round to the front of the house but they wanted to add some plants that are just going to gently seed around spread and create a bit of a carpet of which hopefully all of these will so very looking forward or very much looking forward to coming back and seeing this area in time um and then i whizzed down here for a second wasn't a huge job but um yeah around the back here it was getting a bit muddy in the winter time so we just used four of the slabs that came up from the what is now the gravel garden and laid those in there and the blackbird's doing its best to flick all the soil back onto the slab so yeah i love that um yes and then of course they've got this lovely orchard at the back which there may be a future project in there creating a bit of a limestone bank with wildflowers so very much looking forward to that and then we have the pond area which i haven't done anything with i'm sure you might have just for a split second there been looking at that thinking they paid you to make that joel no this is not a joel ashton pond uh this is a pond that the client's put in many years ago unfortunately it's developed a leak so this is going to be another project down the line so we are planning to effectively make this pond bigger create a new seating area there move that shed back into the corner and do all sorts of fun stuff in this area so stay tuned for that it's going to be a really fun and interesting project which i'm very much looking forward to but that's a 2027 job so uh yeah bear that in mind and then the last part of the job that we've been doing for these clients is basically giving them more room for pots so originally there was just this row of concrete down here which had some of these pots already on it and of course that didn't really work in terms of trying to you know sort of walk down here without dropping off onto the grass there was a bit of a little little bit of a drop off uh and uh yeah so it wasn't very practical so what we've done is we've repurposed all the slabs that came up from that part of the garden and put in this lovely very walkable path which now means loads more room for pots so really nice little addition to the garden nice little areas north facing so this is going to be more shady or shade tolerant stuff down that side uh so yes that's giving them a lot more room for all of the pots that they're looking to grow on and then you may remember i mentioned about these three aces which were going to go underneath the apple trees they've had a cut back this year so i did suggest to the client that we put these in here i've not obviously planted them or anything yet the clients are going to do that but they were around the other side on the gravel garden so i thought it might be quite nice to have like three dashes of color these lovely aces great color um which is really really beautiful um but obviously aces prefer shade so with this being north facing and when the apple tree grows back out of it i thought this is a good spot for them um so that's that's going to work really nicely they're going to actually get some nicer containers for those and put them you know set them in the grass so yeah those aren't in their final positions but it gives you an idea and then the topsoil a lot of the topsoil that came out we kind of blended that into the edge of this path and that's now all been sown with a mix of native wildflowers and grasses so that hopefully a fair few different species start popping up in that area and this area that had a bit of a natural dip which has now been seeded as well so that is this area if i come over here you get an idea as to what we've done down there well there you have it a wildlife garden made even better for wildlife and there are many features of course that are already here on this site we've got a great little wildflower meadow area behind this herbaceous border behind me there's already the orchard area they've got longer rough grassy areas with nettles brambles all sorts of plants that are really good for wildlife as well so they really are doing everything they can to encourage wildlife to this space and fingers crossed this time next year hopefully we'll be looking at making a brand new wildlife pond which will just improve this site even further so i really hope you've enjoyed today's video i hope you've enjoyed seeing how i've improved this garden for wildlife hopefully i'll be back to bring you an update on this garden before too long i really wish i could see hopefully i can this border in a few weeks time because once it starts filling out and particularly as we get into spring and summer next year this thing is going to look absolutely divine and hopefully will give the front of this house the real wow factor as people come into the new gate and entranceway so thank you so much for watching if you've enjoyed today's video please give it a like and share it and subscribe to the channel and hopefully i'll be back very soon to film this garden but also bring you more content and how you can help wildlife in your own garden in videos to come thanks for watching i'll see you all very soon