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The Habitat Garden

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TheHabitatGardener View Drop Down
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Joined: 03 Dec 2018
Location: Essex/ Cali
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    Posted: 31 Jan 2019 at 8:00pm
This forum has been a huge source of inspiration behind my new (non commercial!) blog so I hope it is ok to share it here? It follows my leanings and learnings on habitat gardening as I develop my garden in rural Essex. As I mentioned in a previous post, over the coming years I hope to build on the habitat for herps, including adding a clean water pond/ more hibernacula/ heaps etc... and record the resulting species. I dream to one day open the garden as a kind of habitat demonstration garden. The idea is to inspire all gardeners to see themselves as habitat gardeners and therefor custodians of the natural world. I hope you like it - feel free to follow and share! www.thehabitatgarden.co.uk
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chubsta View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chubsta Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31 Jan 2019 at 11:37pm
Beautiful looking garden, there must be so much potential!

It was very nice reading though your blogs and seeing you reminisce about drinking the milk after the blue-tits had been at it - only a couple of days ago I was trying to explain to our 14 year old that we would get milk delivered and in Winter the birds would drink the first inch of cream off the top - she couldn't believe we would not just throw the whole lot away.

I hope you are able to fulfill your dream of a wildlife garden, mine is very much the few pallets with budlea growing through and a couple of compost heaps but I guess some of us just weren't born with any artistic leanings.

I look forward to its progress...
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Suzy View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Suzy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Feb 2019 at 4:18pm

Very interesting. How I would love to have 3 acres! We will have been at this house thirty years in September, and in very recent years great crested newts and a lizard, or two, have arrived. I never dreamt we'd entice either to our garden, but it's lovely. 
Many on this forum know areas of land very well and are disappointed (putting it mildly) when organisations go in heavy handed, and in the name of conservation ruin habitats. Being in charge of your own patch, your garden, gives you a chance to be a bit more considerate.
We have such a variety of species here that this year we are going to record them all. We've said we'd do this for years, but this is the one! I've even bought a cheap listening device to enable me to hear grasshoppers and crickets, which are now beyond my hearing. You don't always see them if you don't hear them!
I wish you luck.
Suz
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chubsta View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chubsta Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Feb 2019 at 11:50pm
Originally posted by Suzy Suzy wrote:

I've even bought a cheap listening device to enable me to hear grasshoppers and crickets, which are now beyond my hearing. You don't always see them if you don't hear them!


we have a small bat-detector and that picks up crickets incredibly well, it is great fun trying to home in on them in the undergrowth, although the times we have actually managed to spot one can be counted on one hand
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Liz Heard View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Liz Heard Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Feb 2019 at 12:30am

Thanks for sharing TheHabitatGardener.

Crickets in the garden? brilliant!

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote TheHabitatGardener Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Feb 2019 at 1:13am
Thanks all - great idea to record all the species Suzy, your garden sounds like a haven. Do you have specialist skills in ID and recording? A lot of folk on here seem to. I want to develop my skills/ experience in this field and ones own garden seems the perfect place to begin! I saw there was a page on the Wildlife Gardening Forum on surveys you can feed your findings into which I thought might be of interest: http://www.wlgf.org/garden_surveys.html#gsc.tab=0

They also talk about Dr Jennifer Owen who surveyed her garden over thirty years with amazing results, over 8,000 species! http://www.wlgf.org/how-many_species.html#gsc.tab=0

Best of luck with your year of surveying, would love to know how you go about it and what you find!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Suzy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Feb 2019 at 10:40pm
Ah maybe I needn't have got this cheap listening device as I have a bat device, which might work. 
Having said that I got a super duper new bat device for Xmas which will ID what is in the air around you. With my present one I have to do the identifying from the sounds I hear. Can't wait to try it out.

Suz
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