My Garden and Other Animals

FEBRUARY

SETTLING IN AND KNUCKLING DOWN

For the entire first week in our new house I’m not afraid to admit that the garden hardly got a look-in. Anyone who has ever moved house knows that the list of jobs needing to be done in order to get services up and running can seem endless. In fact, most of the week was spent waiting in various electronic queuing systems as I attempted to persuade everyone from internet providers to satellite installers to actually do what they were supposedly paid to do – help me out!

Having moved in on Monday 31 January, it was the following weekend before we were even able to surface for air and actually carve out some garden time. Finally, as our first Sunday in the house arrived, we hurriedly showered, dressed, excitedly gulped down our porridge and donned warm clothes. At last, a garden day!

Equipped with notebooks, we had decided that the wisest use of time would be to take both a full stock-take of what we actually had in the garden and, importantly, what state it was in, before brutal decisions were to be made as to what was for the chop. To say that in many ways we were starting with a blank slate would have been an understatement. From even the most cursory of glances around the garden it was obvious that many of the shrubs and trees had been neglected for so long they had become so malformed and twisted that to put them out of their misery might be the kindest course of action.

First to come under our scrutiny was a mature but hideously deformed wisteria, sprawled across the central half of the garage wall. The climber gave the impression more of a mangy dog tied to a rusty fence than the stately and regal vine we know it to be when given proper care and attention. Hanging by its own weight a couple of yards away from the wall in some places and virtually nailed to it elsewhere, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plant more in need of a bit of TLC. After much debate we decided that it might not be a lost cause, but would need a ferocious short back-and-sides and total retraining to be given a fighting chance of making the grade.

The same, however, couldn’t be said for two small cherry trees behind the garage, which had been so brutally disfigured by the seemingly totally random action of lopping off of various limbs, and were in such poor condition that they looked half dead. After somewhat less of a debate we decided the best option here would be to remove them entirely and replace them with some healthy new fruit trees.

Another plant that we also had to give the Caligula-style thumbs down was the middle rowan tree, which, sandwiched between another similar-sized rowan and a big beech tree, had, in truth, never really been given enough room to flourish, making it look like the arboreal runt of the litter. Additionally, having been planted right in the middle of the bottom part of the lawn, its foliage would undoubtedly cast a huge shadow over the area I had set aside for the meadow, which as a habitat needed to be both light and airy for the flowers to flourish. Still, cutting down a mature tree is a decision that should never be taken lightly, as the nineteenth-century parson and gardener Canon Henry Ellacombe famously once said, ‘A garden without trees scarcely deserves to be called a garden.’

As we were keen to try and make our decisions based on what we thought would best suit the birds and the bees (amongst other groups), we were also mindful of the fact that surely the single most important way to make a garden more wildlife-friendly is to plant a tree. As stated by Ken Thompson in his wonderful wildlife gardening book, No Nettles Required, the more trees gardens have, the more beetles, bugs, snails, slugs, woodlice, social wasps, leaf-mining insects and moths will be attracted to use them for bed and breakfast, which in turn will prove a magnet for animals from higher up the food chain, such as birds and mammals. In addition, trees provide an extra dimension to gardens, enabling them to house more wildlife, just like we would now be in a position to fit more stuff into our new two-floored/three-bedroom house than in my previous single-bedroom flat.

However, taking everything into consideration, and with heavy hearts, we agreed that the garden would be better served in the long term if the rowan were removed. This same decision was also unfortunately extended to a small, sickly birch tree cowering in the shadow of a much larger and beautifully symmetrical birch adjacent to the playing field. A couple of small, nasty alien conifers on the wooded bank would also be for the chop, but these wouldn’t be missed for a second.

With other plants, though, our concord would be severely tested. Dotted along the border of the wood, for example, were three or four random shrubs, which in their winter plumage neither of us recognised. Early on in this process, Christina declared herself to be in the ‘if in doubt, chop it out’ camp, whilst I was a follower of the ‘cut in haste, repent at leisure’ school of thought, meaning I inevitably took on the roll of defence counsel, arguing that the shrubs should receive a stay of execution until we found out what they were. After much cross-examination, however, the prosecution (Christina) eventually relented and agreed to wait and see how they turned out before making any decisions about their future. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that this was just the first of many such battles of wills and that our strong-minded obstinacies would be tested on many more occasions over the next few months.

However, one job we were both keen to see achieved as soon as possible was the removal of Mr Gregory’s fence, which stood out as an ugly junction between garden and wooded bank, in contradiction to our preferred natural blending of all the habitats from back door to brook.

Another undertaking we instantly agreed upon would be to clear as much ivy as possible from the oak tree in the northwest corner. On the very first occasion I had viewed the property, I remember being utterly thrilled to find that a mature oak tree was part and parcel of the garden. However, with many of the tree’s roots exposed due to the undercutting nature of the brook, the fact that it was festooned from head to toe with ivy and the sheer amount of standing dead wood present, all seemed clearly to indicate that the tree had been struggling for some time.

In terms of an ability to attract wildlife to your garden, no one species can come even close to an English or pedunculate oak, with some naturalists having even likened an individual tree to the status of a nature reserve in its own right. With a staggering 284 different invertebrate species having been identified as living on oak trees, a diverse array of birds and mammals reliant on their acorns, a number of bat species roosting in the hollows and crevices, and great-spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches and treecreepers scouring the wood for food and nesting holes, it’s no surprise that even a struggling oak would be one of the garden’s real crown jewels.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that ivy has pretty good wildlife credentials too! Not only is ivy our only native, evergreen climber but it also provides the most wonderful late flourish of nectar in November and a ready supply of berries for our winter thrushes too. The latticework that forms as ivy crawls like a malevolent scaffold over other plants can also provide the perfect nooks and crannies for anything from hunting spiders to nesting spotted flycatchers. On this occasion, though, due to the abundance of ivy elsewhere on the bank, and particularly in amongst the hazels, it would have to give way to our not so mighty oak.

Feeling satisfied that we now had a healthy to-do list of hard and soft landscaping tasks, the only other pressing concern would be when to carry out the work. With spring only just around the corner, the time available to carry out tree surgery tasks, which should only really be done during the dormant winter period, was rapidly disappearing. On our walk round, we had already been delighted to spot the first snowdrop shoots emerging, and so the last thing we wanted would be for the sensitive woodland flora and meadow plants to be trampled underfoot at such a vulnerable time. In other words, I would need to find a tree surgeon on Monday morning!

Taking a break from arduous life and death decisions, we were delighted to invite our first non-familial visitors over in the afternoon. Nigel and his wife Cheryle are old friends I originally met through the annual birding fest that is the Rutland Birdfair. Nige, although he is far too modest to admit it, is one of Britain’s finest birders and has probably forgotten more about our feathered friends than I will ever know, whilst Cheryle, who claims to be a birding widow, also happens to be much more interested and knowledgeable than she lets on. Much more pertinent to this book, they are also the most wonderful gardeners and Christina and I were both keen to try and emulate elements of what they had managed to achieve in their own gorgeous Sussex garden over the last decade.

Arriving with a house-warming present in the form of a basket of native primroses, we were secretly hoping that rather than coming up with specific suggestions as to what we could put where, they would think it more useful to not allow us to become daunted by the enormous amount of work ahead of us but instead to be encouraging and supportive of our vision … and they didn’t disappoint.

The party of four almost instantly split, so while Cheryle and Christina wandered around the garden excitedly chattering away about building flower-rich herbaceous borders, Nigel and I scrambled around the wooded bank, indulging in one of every birder’s favourite games: guessing which birds we could expect to record in the garden over the next year. Kingfishers, grey wagtails and bullfinches were all excitedly discussed in turn as I proudly took Nigel on the first proper guided tour of our soon to be back-garden nature reserve. Our guests couldn’t have been better first visitors as they faithfully dished out encouraging words and inspiration in huge dollops.

Being a couple that have to work for a living, it would not be until the following weekend that we would have any opportunity to get stuck into our urgent ‘to-do’ list, as the evenings were still far too dark to carry out anything meaningful outside after work. However, during this downtime Christina was also able to put her artistic bent to good use by drawing a few basic sketches of the current layout of the garden in her notebook. Onto this plan we were then able to insert potential locations for the various wildlife-friendly features we planned to install later in the year. This enabled us, for example, to trial on paper the best places to dig the herbaceous borders and the pond – two essential components of any self-respecting wildlife garden, and features that would also be added to our garden, hopefully sooner rather than later!

The weekend duly arrived, with a promise of cold and clear weather, or, in other words, perfect conditions for our first practical day in the garden. Initially, prior to bowsaws and loppers being wielded, I wanted to ensure that sufficient numbers of ‘before’ photos were taken. These would then ensure that people visiting our beautiful swan of a garden would not only be able to marvel at the end product, but also be able to appreciate the full transformation from original ugly duckling too!

Keen to ensure her secateurs saw some action immediately, Christina decided to begin work on our postage-stamp-sized front garden. Having already agreed that tackling both gardens in the first year would have been a bridge too far, we had decided that the much bigger job of the back garden would take priority. There were, however, simple measures that could be carried out in the front to make it look more presentable. So while I snapped away, Christina set to heavily pruning a couple of long-neglected roses and re-training a tired-looking Japanese quince.

When I came round to the front I found Christina armed with secateurs and slowly disappearing behind a pile of severed branches. ‘It’s going to look a lot worse before it gets better’ was her pre-prepared answer to my tremulous question asking why she had really needed to remove so much. Pointing out that she had consulted none other than the mighty Bob Flowerdew, who had written a book on pruning which I had given to her for Christmas some six weeks earlier, I had to concede that on this occasion she knew better than me what she was doing.

Tidying up after Christina is a technique at which admittedly I have had much practice over the last six years, and so while she stood back to admire her handiwork it was left to me to ferry her brash through to the designated dumping zone – a dark corner of the garden behind the garage. This done, I was then keen to encourage her to put those massacring skills to good use in the back garden – we still had a ‘to-do’ list as long as my arm!

We had decided that, wherever possible, the wooded bank should mostly consist of native species, with the only exceptions being those ornamental aliens that had significant wildlife value. This meant that the two small confers, a leylandii cypress (my least favourite garden plant by some distance, for obvious reasons) and a stunted variegated male holly bush, were soon made short change of as I felled them with a bowsaw and Christina lopped the offending articles into more portable pieces. We then combined forces to drag the material over the fence and across to the dumping pile, which was now assuming ever-larger proportions. After all the talking and planning it felt great to at last get physical and stuck in, and the work was made even more enjoyable by the fact that the weather was so cold. As we grafted away whilst building up a sweat in the process we could see our own breath condensing in the cold air right in front of us.

Christina truly had the bit between her teeth, and, having seen off the aliens in a frenzy of lopping, wanted to turn her attentions to the ash tree in the centre of the bank, which she thought made the area look dark and dingy. Having already agreed that the rowan should be removed, to say I was incredibly reluctant to remove another mature native tree would have been an understatement. As the conversation tipped over from a robust difference of opinion into raised voices and then a full-blown argument, the crux became clear. Put simply, the subtext of the disagreement was about nothing less than the future direction of the garden; with Christina in one corner wanting primarily a garden while I wanted it to go down the Nature Reserve route.

The main battle line was going to be the wooded bank, with Christina maintaining it was too messy, and so by removing more vegetation and tidying it up, this would create more light in a dark corner of the garden. I countered that of course woodlands were often a bit dark and messy by their very nature, and therefore it would be better for the wildlife if the bank were to remain largely wild and woolly. I then hammered home my point by arguing that removing the ash tree would break a vital link in the chain, meaning that the continued canopy cover across the bottom of the garden would disappear. This would have the knock-on effect of denying lots of shy woodland birds and mammals the wildlife corridor they needed to move between the gardens. Building up another head of steam, I pointed out that in no way were we in any position to safely remove a mature tree with the tools and experience we had, so it would have to stay. But ever the conciliator, I offered as a compromise my promise that the more formal part of the garden, closer to the house, would be much more manicured and tidy.

While I would define my relationship with Christina as one consisting of reasonably regular arguments, we do make up soon after, and we were both in the act of apologising when interrupted by the sound of Lorraine’s voice next door, keen to hear how our first practical morning in the garden was going.

Pleased that our neighbours wanted to take such an interest in our plot, we filled them in on our rationale behind removing the aliens in order both to give more space to the (more cherished) native species and to attempt to open up the woodland a touch more to enable better views of the brook. On hearing the water mentioned, Lorraine’s eyes twinkled as she declared how her and Andy had always coveted our river frontage, and then surprised us by revealing that they had previously entertained the idea of trying to purchase the bottom of our garden after Mr Gregory had moved out. Privately of course both Christina and I had ‘too late now!’ thoughts; but ever the generous souls, I was quick to suggest that any time either needed a watery fix, they both had carte blanche to hop over the fence whenever they felt like it!

Lorraine also hilariously accused us of attempting to steal her garden birds with our now extensive offerings in the form of a stand-up bird table, a sunflower hearts feeder, a Niger feeder and a fat-ball dispenser. It was probably true that in the space of barely a week, and given the superior feed on offer in our garden, many of the birds had already swapped their notoriously fickle allegiances and were now choosing to spend most of their time emptying our feeders rather than theirs.

But joking aside, with our feeders in the centre, Andy and Lorraine’s to the left and a small feeding station in Dennis and Marjory’s garden immediately to our right, the local resident birds must surely have been some of the best fed in the southwest. Also, in the space of just a couple of weeks since we had moved in, it was not only astonishing how quickly the birds had found the food, but noticeable that we had already recorded a wider range of species at our feeders here than in the previous 10 years at our old garden flat in Bristol. Interestingly, the sheer quantity of birds was also much higher; it was not uncommon for us to peer out of the kitchen window to observe not only that every single perch was taken on all the feeders, but that queuing systems had often formed on the nearby bushes as well. The garden was quite literally alive with birds! This rich variety and abundance instantly brought two thoughts to my mind: firstly, what fun it would be compiling a garden bird list; and secondly, that it wouldn’t be too long before this huge concentration of small birds would register on a sparrowhawk’s radar!

With Christina away visiting friends overnight, I dragged myself out of bed the following morning for a spot of garden birdwatching, only momentarily undeterred by the miserable weather. One of the slight peculiarities, and immense irritations, of the house meant that there were comparatively few good vantage points from which to actually properly enjoy the garden, a fact we would rectify when we had sufficient cash to build the much-planned rear extension. In the meantime, the current best seat, or stand, in the house was from the landing window, halfway up the stairs.

Looking down, fully expecting a tit and finch-fest, I was aghast to see not a single bird on any of the feeders due to the dominating presence of a whole bunch of greedy grey squirrels. Four of these invaders could be counted, dotted across the garden and monopolising each feeder whilst the birds looked on helplessly from the nearby bushes, too intimidated to compete.

The grey squirrel is an animal that as a naturalist fills me with a whole range of mixed emotions. Brought over from the eastern side of North America and deliberately introduced on some twenty occasions between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their rapid spread throughout England and Wales has proved the stuff of ecological nightmares. Now numbering as many as 2.5 million, this adaptable and hardy animal has become so widespread in our parks, gardens and woodlands that it is now quite probably the most commonly seen mammal in Britain, and as such is accepted by many as a wholly natural part of our wildlife.

To the neutral, the greys have obvious charm and appeal, and it has to be stated that they didn’t actually ask to be brought over to the UK and then become so vilified just for making an unqualified success of their new home. Unfortunately, the cold fact of the matter is that they have undoubtedly had a major impact on our native flora and fauna, which are poorly adapted to withstand their presence. Most well known is the contribution of the grey squirrel to the catastrophic decline of our native red squirrel, so much so that the red squirrel now only flourishes either in large parts of Scotland where the greys are still mostly absent, in a few grey-squirrel-free offshore islands or in large conifer belts ill-suited to the Yankee invader. Perhaps less understood by the public, though, are both the immense damage that grey squirrels cause to trees and the serious impact on many of our native, breeding woodland birds. Though many have called for their total extermination, this is totally impracticable, and, I’m afraid, irrespective of how we feel about the animal, they are definitely here to stay.

While a small part of me admired their brazen attitude as they reached across from the pergola, like supple athletes, to empty my feeders in double-quick time, the larger part of me was so indignant that I instinctively ran downstairs to shoo them out of the garden, momentarily forgetting I was in little more than my underpants. On seeing my naked flesh and hearing my accompanying ‘get out of it!’ they hurriedly spun round on their heels and triple-jumped their way back into the woodland at the bottom of the garden, disappearing in a matter of seconds.

I knew that with such a major food source on offer they would be back as soon as the coast was clear. So for the next hour I played a cat-and-mouse game with them, as I watched them quietly creep back into the garden and onto the feeders only for me to rush out and scare them off again (having got dressed in the meantime – of course!). After a while they either got the message that they were not welcome or had had their fill anyway, but no one was more aware than I was that this was little more than tokenism, and that I would ultimately have to adopt some serious anti-squirrel technologies if I didn’t want to spend the equivalent of the Greek national debt on bird food. So the ‘tree rats’ should enjoy the free handouts while they still could! With the squirrels at least temporarily pushed back, this at last gave me my first opportunity to watch the feeders being used by the animals they were designed for.

As the birds slowly returned, I delighted in the most wonderful hour watching blue tits, great tits, robins, chaffinches and greenfinches pile in despite the still awful weather. It’s been well known for at least a couple of decades that living with pets can lower blood pressure, lessen anxiety and boost our immunity, but because I can’t commit to owning a pet, due to the fact that I’m often away filming, I have to say that watching garden birds comes a very close second. It’s hard to explain the level of happiness I gain from watching the birds go about their daily business, but for someone who often spends his life dashing around at 70mph, it was important to take some time out on the hard shoulder every now and again.

I don’t claim to have been the only person to have uncovered this elixir of life, as the RSPB recently revealed the astonishing statistic that as many as 40 per cent of British households will feed their garden birds at some point during the year – more evidence of the power of wildlife as one of the best natural anti-depressants on the market.

The rain eventually receded and Christina returned, so we began to make preparations to launch ourselves into the garden for the afternoon’s activity: Operation Fence Dismantle. Earlier in the week I had sneakily taken a peek into next door’s garage, while they were putting out their recycling, and had noted a far more impressive collection of gardening tools and implements than we had yet been able to muster. Having made a mental note that some of these might come in handy at some point, barely a few days later I was now hoping they could be persuaded to lend us one of their crowbars. Knocking on the door, I fully expected it to be answered by Marjory and so was surprised to meet the tall, gaunt figure of Dennis, the Great Gatsby of our street, and the last of our immediate neighbours I had not yet met.

Though undeniably unwell, in addition to being both an ex-policeman and an utterly charming chap, Dennis also confirmed that he would be more than happy to lend us any of the tools we might need. Because his illness seriously affected his ability to undertake anything but the lightest of duties, he explained that he wasn’t in any position to wield tools, and so would be pleased to see them put to good use.

Since Dennis had lived in the house for the best part of 20 years, I was also to discover that he was the most enormous fountain of knowledge about both his and our garden and the adjacent brook. Both keen gardeners themselves, Dennis and Marjory regularly saw kingfishers whizzing up and down the brook, and in addition to seeing pheasants in the garden had even recorded roe deer on a couple of occasions too! He also tantalisingly revealed that whilst brown trout used to be commonplace in the brook, he hadn’t seen them for several years, possibly due to a combination of a couple of unfortunate pollution incidents upstream and a silting up of the stream bed. Trying, in part, to rectify the silt issue, he had even put a few heavy blocks in the water at the bottom of his garden to break up the water flow and perturb the bed, but this was in reality little more than piecemeal and had had little effect.

As the discussion turned to our garden, I excitedly gabbled about both the grand plans and the impressive list of birds we had already attracted to our feeders in the short time since moving in, before turning to the subject of how frustrated I was beginning to get with the bullying tactics of the squirrels. Dennis and Marjory had themselves encountered the same problems, until they had invested in special cage feeders designed to keep the squirrels at bay, and which had seemingly nipped the problem in the bud. Having not encountered anywhere near this level of mammalian feeder disturbance in Bristol, where the squirrels’ appearances were usually more novelty than irritation, it was obvious that my old feeders were now patently not up to the job and I would have to invest in some more!

Apparently I was not the first of Dennis’s next-door neighbours to have had this issue and he asked if I had heard about Mr Gregory’s battle with squirrels. Realising from my quizzical face that patently I hadn’t, he recounted how Mr Gregory had so detested their aggressive and domineering tactics that he had taken it upon himself to initiate a shooting and trapping campaign during his last few years in the house, claiming in the process a grand total of 212 squirrel scalps! What made the anecdote even more hilarious was that Lorraine (the neighbour to our other side) positively encouraged the squirrels into her garden and so was mortified to find her furry friends being so ruthlessly wiped out just over the garden fence. This meant that in order not to fall out with his neighbour, Mr Gregory had limited his operation to either night-time or when Lorraine was out at work – what a character!

Armed with all the correct tools, Christina and I quickly made short work of the fence line, as we firstly removed the wire rabbit-guard stapled to the front, then prised away the wooden rails with the borrowed crowbar and finally wiggled the posts free of their concrete footings. Standing back to admire our handiwork, the garden looked a touch strange without the one obstacle that had prevented the wildlife wandering freely between the wooded bank and the rest of the garden. Importantly, though, the garden and brook had now become one, and it was one more job off the list, too!

Stacking the wood behind the garage, we retreated to the kitchen for Christina to make a quick cuppa and for me to quickly catch up with how the English rugby team was doing against Italy. I had scarcely been given the chance to find out the score before hearing Christina’s urgent, shrill voice imploring me to come quickly to the kitchen. Seeing her nose pressed up against the window I followed suit, and was utterly astonished to see a male pheasant strutting around the garden as he cleared up the seed debris dropped by the tits and finches from the feeders, having obviously just strolled in via the new 15-yard wildlife entrance to the garden.

The pheasant is an introduced, and therefore in many purists’ eyes, a lesser species. Originally hailing from southeast Russia and Asia, it is thought to have been brought over to Britain by the Normans, and over time has become part and parcel of the British countryside and, in my considered opinion, a wonderful addition to our fauna too. The pheasant is also one of those species characterised by sexual dimorphism, which means that the sexes look completely different. The female pheasants often tend to be smaller, yellowy-brown and with marked flecking; colours and patterns which enable them to quickly melt into the background when incubating their clutch in spring; while the male, with his iridescent copper-coloured body, metallic green head, red facial wattles and ear tufts, could be described as a dandy with an attitude. Fatherhood is seemingly an alien concept for the male pheasant, as he plays little or no part in the rearing of his chicks. The males are more of the love ’em and leave ’em type, their sole aim being to assemble a harem of two or more females, which they will defend at all costs from other marauding males keen to chance their arm. Until they have been mated, that is, after which the males thoughtlessly abandon the females to their fate.