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Wildlife Garden
Garden Plan
The hedge and habitats
Photographs of the Wildlife Garden - a new hedge and wildlife habitats
During the summer the agent for the local housing association contacted us to ask whether they could translocate some slow worms from a building site next to our allotment into our wildlife garden. We were happy to oblige and let them build a hibernaculum and logpiles for the reptiles. In return they helped us out by digging a trench for our new hedge. Below are some before and after photos of both the hedge and the new habitats.
This picture shows the area just before the hibernaculum is created and the trench dug for the hedge.
Below you can see the new hibernaculum and trench. The hibernaculum is a hole dug into the ground that is then filled with bricks, stones and other rubble and topped with soil. Eventually the soil will be covered with grass and wildflowers.
We ordered 150 native hedge trees which included buckthorn, quickthorn, hazel, oak, guelder rose and Common Alder. They arrived in November and we got planting. First we needed to add lots of well rotted compost and bark chippings to the trench, which had a high content of clay in places. Then we started planting and backfilling the trench. It took us two very cold days to plant the 47m trench with hedge plants!
The hedge survived the first couple of months so in January we added more composted shreddings as a mulch.
We had a few plants left over so we planted a second hedge next to the bird hide.
