Emperor , 10 months ago

Good stuff, makes me wonder if we need a rewilding community.

I did something similar in my previous house, so some suggestions:

• On one side if the pond dig down 5-6 inches and lay down some plastic sheeting. You can then turn this into a bog garden. If you lower the lip of the pond slightly on that side, excess rain water will drain into the bog garden.
• Have a chat with the Council, local wildlife groups and Landlife - it may be you can get a specific wildflower seed mix for your area, preserving local plants that thrive in your soil/climate. It may be the Council is planning or have made a wildflower meadow (or you could encourage them to do so) with a specific mix. You could end up with large wildflower meadows and then little wildflower islands linking them up.
• Frog spawn is relatively easy to come by, ask around others with a pond - my neighbour was dying to give some away. I ended up chasing frogs around the house so be careful what you wish for.
• Look after your hedgehogs - I had stone walls which wasn’t great for them (when it snowed you could see their footprints coming out if one gate, onto the pavement and down another). If neighbours are interested you could drill a suitably sized hole in the fences and feed a shirt length of pipe through. You can buy little hedgehog hotels which you could stash away in the corner of the garden. I’ve currently got 4 of them roaming round.
• Put up a bee hotel. Help those rarer bees find a home. We have a local pest control firm that will also rehouse tree bees and they have a network of boxes across the region that they take them too.
• Put up a bug hotel - you can also get combined bee and bug hotels.
• If there is any fallen or chopped down wood then pile some up and let it rot a bit. Great for bugs and fungi.