Patch progress

Today I have been working on my "little" project to try and make an overgrown patch look nicer without disturbing much wildife. See the first post on this click here. It really is hard work and I still have a lot to do, but as you will discover from the pictures below it already looks completely different to before. The good weather helped too! We were able to eat lunch outside which hasn't happened in a while.




So, what have I actually done. Well, this morning we took a trip to homebase to get some plants for my patch. I then had the seemingly impossible task of weeding the patch. I am trying to do it bit by bit so that I cause minimal damage to the wildlife there. I cleared it eventually and I have to say that it is probaly the neatest it is ever going to look. So for now, I have only weeded about 1/3 of it. It still looks a lot neater than it did before. I then added some compost to the patch which should help the wild flowers when I plant them. Also the soil that is already there is chalky with stones, so the plants would have struggled to grow healthily. After this I mixed the soil up and turned it over. I then put the plants in the patch. At the moment the plants are quite small but they are supposed to grow quite big. When they are a bit bigger it should hopefully make it look a bit more wild, and start to attract the lizards back to this area.

The picture below shows the overall progress of the project.

The plants that I bought at Homebase toady are quite different to each other, but I think that they will look ok in the patch when they have grown. I tried to pick some that would not look out of place in the area. There are 2 grassy-type plants. One of them has thin "branches" and the other has some hairy seed heads that I thought looked quite nice. There is also a small green bushy plant. The last is a dark purpleish colour which I thought would make a nice change to the weeds and green plants.

The image on the left shows the seed head of one of the plants. I am quite fond of the plants in the picture above but I hope to get some more plants from a proper garden centre. I have decided a different location for our pond. This is because I have seen frogs around a different area the most. But I am hoping to get a water feature for my patch now, which might attract the birds and give them the opportunity to wash themselves. I must also buy some pond lining to go in my new location.

I have some wild flower seeds too, which need to be started off in trays or small pots and then transplanted into my patch. In the picture on the left below, it shows the area already covered by my new plants. The water feature is planned for the middle of this strip and the wild flowers should fit in at the end. I am hoping that the good weather carries on for these new plants to develop ok.
I have changed the font for my blog now and hopefully it should make the presentation a bit better.
All photos were taken in my garden on 20/09/08