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Then deep fried with a Tempura dip.

I follow the art of Piet Oufolf and @Jack Straw .

Climate change. Since 2000 many pest and microbe invaders, as well as the furnace like July’s are literally killing species of trees used to a temperate climate. A recent gardening programme mentioned in passing that all Birch will disappear from SE England in the coming decades due to...

I planted Box hedge cubes in 2021. I’ve never grown Box, none of our direct neighbours have Box. Within a year Box Moth caterpillars had decimated them. Not wanting to embark on a lifetime of managing Pheromone traps to fight them, I dug them out, replacing with Yew.

Without teaching you to suck eggs :lolol: . Did you take that lawn down to soil level and remove the cuttings away. You have to be brutal. I find it takes a few cuts for the mower to cope with that. For the final mow then seeding, I waited until October when forecast rain was a cert. I’m...

Seeds. Fairly expensive, I know the owner of Sussex Prairie Gardens who wants to turn an adjacent field into a meadow, he’s deterred from buying Yellow-rattle due to this. I bought too much as I’d planned to turn our top lawn (former perfect ‘football pitch’) into another meadow, but last...

Really pleased with my verge mini meadow, its peak is still two month away. The Yellow-rattle has worked a treat in suppressing otherwise dominant grasses.

Is that a rare example of Acer pseudoplatanus right behind it?

I was caught by his Feb butchery, didn’t realise they started in winter! You should be fine as meadow wildflowers are inherently slow starters. Two other things I do are to gently remove Dandelions with their entire tap root as they can smother, also with bare patches I planted small...

@WATFORD zero I glanced past security into your private road, to see if your meadow had survived the BHCC sit-on mower scalping. Looks good, well done for putting in the stakes :bowdown: . For some reason, all the rain?, my verge meadow is advanced compared to this time last year. Already...

Yes. One of the daylily’s.

Fantasic. Did you do the hard landscaping and paver edging by your own hands? I love the edging, I’ve done a fair amount myself and it negates the need for ever having to tidy up lawn edges. Is that an alternative to Box hedging?

The BHCC officer advised me on the base, never have any holes as large as a 50p piece, as Rattus can squeeze through that. So I use loose recycled paving slabs, butted up against each other. For 15 years, never a sign of them!

Thanks, I guessed as much. When we first moved in we had BHCC pest control visit due to rat/s in a plastic compost bin, the guy said compost heaps are a 5* hotel for rats. I make a lot of compost, II’ll buy another bin.

@Jack Straw I’ve a question on composting, please. We’ve got some spare pallets that I could recycle into a third compost making pile, the existing two are in the plastic bins and on slabs to prevent rats making home. Is it possible to have an open pallet type compost heap but with no Rattus...

A similar view on Hydrangeas, largely due to amount of watering required. In your climate, that’s madness.

You’ll get away with it, so far, as native meadow annuals are slow starters. The BHCC oaf scalped our verge at the end of Feb 2023 as I didn’t have stakes in …. wrongly believing their several years of no-mow was continuing. Hence the stakes and you witnessed the stunning tapestry come June.

Mrs W hates them. The meadow will soon cover them. I was too late for the first brutal scalping of the verge by the BHCC oaf. Have you got 2 token sticks?

I do dread going out in it, to start the year’s gardening.

I’ll be mulching borders soon, through recent experience I find it’s better to do it earlier whilst the soil’s sodden. Also hard pruning say a third of the trees/shrubs in my mixed natives hedge.