You might have noticed that the last entry had a more self-reflective feel than previous blogs. This is because although the practical work on wildlife garden project (i.e. digging) has been ticking over at a nice speed, it has made it rather hard to report much new till now. I'm beginning to realise that part of gardening - and learning to garden - is discovering patience. We are watching things emerge at their own pace, especially as we are not relying on nasty chemicals to do the job for us. But making this happen in 'real-time' i.e. not a swift makeover that happens without anybody seeing it, has brought with it much more scope for passing on messages about the benifits of wildlife friendly gardening.
Over the last three weeks Groundwork Dearne Valley and our team of reserve volunteers have been undertaking some of the 'heavy' landscaping work, taking out arbitrary divides such as fencing and laying a footpath. Given that a motive for building this garden was to highlight the similarities between gardening for wildlife in your own time and managing a nature reserve, the fact that the garden is now beginning to forge a physical link between the vistior hub and the rest of the reserve is a clear design improvement.
Abbove all, people's imaginations have been fuelled as they have started to see the 'shape' of things to come and I have been inundated - in a very nice way - with advice, offers of plants and help. A great thing about building a 'back garden' in a visitor facility is that evreyone is involved - passively or actively - and that spreads the wildlife-friendly message in the most potent way.