A Garden Fit For Babies

I've always tried to garden for babies.  Although I like my garden to be a place of peaceful retreat I also love to hear the wails of juveniles learning to live and to watch the adults flurrying to keep their offspring alive. Peace?  I don't want peace in my garden - a still and silent garden at peace is a dead garden - and me, I like life.

This is a box.

It is a box fixed to a Scots Pine tree growing in my garden.

The box was given to me earlier this year by a friend of mine with the damn fine name of James Connolly.  I set it up expecting it to lie empty for years but thinking: "Who knows .... maybe one day...".

A couple of weeks ago I was blown away when I saw a Blue Tit go into it with some grass in its beak.  Since then I have seen a Blue Tit or maybe two going in and out and now there is a cacophony of wailing nestlings when they come and go.

To me it is still a box.  It looks no different to me than when I put it up and yet, inside, something miraculous is happening.  It might be gruesome too, knowing Tits, but someone has decided my garden might be a good place to raise some babies.

And they are not the only ones.

Trust me - somewhere in this mass of Hawthorn foliage there is a large Wood Pigeon sitting on a nest.

A pair has been visiting my garden for the three springs I have been here but this is the first time they have nested in it.  They've been companions to me and each other through the winters too.

I presume it's the dense prickly branches and foliage that make them difficult to see that makes this such an attractive spot for them.

And I know there are sparrows in a couple of the hedges and even if the blackbirds aren't nesting here they are a fairly constant presence collecting the best of juicy creatures to take home to their kids somewhere.

This is also a garden for my babies.

I know this is nearly all green at the moment but I am blown away by this verdant carpet which is covering the earth just as I hoped it would.

Sometimes, it is all a little scary having babies.

Pots of dark-leaved Russian Sage (Salvia officinalis 'Purpurascens') from cuttings taken last year from a straggly plant bought 7 years ago which itself may well have come from a cutting.  It looks like I treated them okay as they seem to be flourishing.

The self-collected Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odoratus) seed, on the other hand, has germinated in the six-tray but is hardly vigorous.

In the pots are 5 Himalayan Lilies (Cardiocrinum giganteum); now in their second year these can take four to seven years to flower.  I've nurtured them in their pots but at sometime I am going to have to let these plants grow in the ground where they will flower, set seed and die.  These came from a plant which did just that in the garden of my friends Rudi Vogels and Maureen Closs.

The Pot Marigolds (Calendula officinalis) in the apparently empty tray have emerged since this picture was taken - I'd left them out in the cold to germinate in the hope of getting tougher plants but at some point I shall have to prick out the seedlings, which will still seem so fragile in my fat clumsy fingers, if they are to have a chance of a decent life.

For the moment I feel kind of relaxed about the strawberries I raised last summer and which I planted out last autumn.  I manured the ground last year and as well as their own flowers they also have Bergamot (Monarda) following them and Verbena bonariensis following them to give sustenance to very busy bees through the summer.

But then the Blackbirds will want the fruits and so will I - do I put nets down to deter the birds?  And what about the baby slugs?  They like strawberries too.  And so does that fungus Botrytis - don't they all have right to nourishment from this patch?

Oh it's a tough life being a gardener with all these life and death decisions affecting all these babies.

Stressful?  Maybe, but ah such joy when I see any of those babies growing into adulthood and going on to make even more babies.  Just now I am loving Honesty: the virtue and the flower (Lunaria annua).

Grown from seed these will do my garden a service possibly for the rest of my life.  And they are colonising around the old nest of tables that I am slowly converting to a rent-free bug hotel in which all manner of invertebrates can raise their babies.

So, maybe, just maybe, I am succeeding in creating a garden fit for babies.  But have I ever had children of my own?  No - so maybe, just maybe, I also don't have a clue what I'm talking about. 

Poo-tee-weet.