A sense of place - 2002

If you're making a garden in a small space you can get your garden "made" within a fairly short time. The major work, such as path-laying, was completed in the first few years, and by 2002 this garden did look "finished". (Though of course they never are.)

Most obvious was the way the boundaries had been raised by the planting of climbers on the walls. Good old ivy produced the most impressive result. It had been extremely difficult to get the trellis up on top of the boundary wall, a couple of years earlier, as I had to work around the ivy that was already well-established. I hoped the ivy and other climbers would use the trellis along the top of the wall so that greenery would block out the poster hoardings visible across the road. By 2002 I realised that this had been so effective that I had forgotten the trellis was underneath. The trellis is covered with a mixed planting of ivy, clematis, jasmine, rose and honeysuckle - and this area is the favourite nesting place of the resident blackbird pair.

In 2002 I carried on putting out bird food through the year, having previously stopped feeding in the summer months. Goldfinches and greenfinches had become regular visitors (though both species were hardly ever seen in previous years) so it seemed best to continue to provide bird seed for them. Numbers of all bird species in the garden seemed to increase in 2002.

Frogs, first seen in the garden in autumn 2001, continued to inhabit the garden and use the tiny pond. The main project for 2002 - indeed the only large garden project I had time for - was the creation of a slightly larger, more carefully planned pond.

It was obvious, with the frogs in residence, that 2002 was the year the garden really became a "wildlife garden". While I had less time to dig and plant and build out there, nature appreciated the lack of disturbance, I guess, and the wildlife settled in.

2003