You may recall, if you follow my blog, that I am developing a big are of my garden this year to attempt to increase biodiversity. I am planning to create an area that will attract a lot more insects to my garden, which in turn, should attract more larger species of insect, bird and may be mammal! Since February, the area has been cleared and fenced and this weekend I worked on getting some raised beds in which will house a wide variety of nectar-rich plants, some of which I will grow from seed. I am also going to intersperse these beds with some veg as well!
I wanted to create an area that was easy to manage and would allow me to have different sections to experiment with, so I utilised three raised beds that I had in a show garden at Gardeners’ World Live in 2012 and some other bits and pieces I had around at home. First we cleared and raked the area, then created a simple wooden edging to separate the area from the rest of the garden. I measure the space and decided how I wanted to three rectangular and 2 square beds to sit. Sawing off some stakes, we screwed these to the corners of the raised beds and then banged them into the soil to hold them in place securely. The area is on a slope so it was a challenge to get everything straight!
Once all the beds were in place, I lined all the path areas with a weed resistant liner and then filled the paths with bark chippings.
Then came the bit I had been waiting for! Last week at school, we built a living willow dome! I was really keen to have a go creating a simple structure at home, so I bought some willow and set about building a living willow arch between the two front beds! I tried to remember all the techniques I had been taught and was pretty pleased with my efforts…. not bad for a first attempt!
To see more photos of the site, right from the start, I will be creating a detailed account of the developments on my website in the next month, but if you want to take a look, you can see more photos on my SmugMug website… a new photo sharing website I am having a play with! It was hard work to get all this done in a weekend, but I am absolutely thrilled with the results. Take a look of my other photos and the development of the site so far by clicking the link below.
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