Hello Again....

Hello All,

It’s been a huge amount of time since I’ve posted on here so I thought it was about time to catch up with some old friends and hopefully find a few new friends also!

It must be three years since I vanished from what really is one of the best wildlife forums online so I thought I’d post a little update of what I’ve been up to and explain why I disappeared!

When I was last on here some of you will remember that I was struggling with a bad hip, well that was sorted out with the addition of a new joint of the ceramic variety. This obviously not only put me out of action for some time but forced a premature retirement from the emergency services!

Needing an income, I set about starting a little business, but I was keen to try and focus this around my passion for wildlife, nature and of course my long-time enjoyment of gardening for wildlife.

As you can imagine as a newbie to business this has commanded a huge amount of my time and I have had to focus most of my time and effort on growing the business into something where I may actually make some sort of living out of it (maybe!) It’s amazing how much I really didn’t and still don’t know!!

I have tried to really focus on the ‘wildlife’ and ‘creating wildlife habitat’ side of gardening and garden design, but when you really specialise like this you limit your customer base to some degree. Therefore we started with more ‘average’ garden designs but encouraged people to have planting schemes for pollinators or wildlife ‘friendly’ hedges instead of fences where possible. This was a great starting place but we are now moving firmly towards real ‘wildlife’ gardens as we are getting known for this type of work and as you can imagine this kind of recognition is really encouraging. Alongside the garden design and practical ‘on your hands and knees’ side of the business, I also build bird boxes and timber products from locally sourced reclaimed materials, I still do a bit of ‘wildlife themed’ photography and use this to sell ‘wildlife themed’ greeting cards, calendars and other similar products. I also use my pictures in the wildlife presentations that I give, and have recently been asked to join the RHS speakers list where my subject is wildlife and gardening for wildlife (I think I’ve created a bit of a stir with some of the traditionalists as my ‘radical’ and out of the box ideas such as gardening for insects and allowing them eat your plants is very different to the well behaved rows of bedding plants that many are used to!) I also run wildlife events for a couple of charitable businesses, that are usually in the form of moth traps or bug/insect walks and recently we were featured on Countryfile for some of our moth recording work we have done at a community farm near to here. Finally we are just starting to supply a few wildlife friendly plants and our own Buddleia collection is up to about forty species! So all in all I’ve managed to pull a little bit off of each of these pots and at least created some kind of business! I can honestly say that it has been and continues to be a very interesting journey!

For those of you who remember my daughter, fondly nicknamed ‘Higlet’ by some on here, she is now 12 and going on 18 very quickly!! She seems to have drifted away from the wildlife stuff that we enjoyed together and that I used to report about on here. But I’m happy that she has a good knowledge base that she will always be able to use to enjoy nature in later life as I did. It is so important that our kids have a good foundation of knowledge about the beautiful world we live in and the wonderful wildlife within it, as they are the next generation to hopefully carry on the good, and often vital work started by some great people in recent years.

Much of my online time is spent on facebook these days and it’s been fab having a few old friends from here pop up on my facebook pages to say hello, I really have appreciated and enjoyed this! I mention no names (Wendy Barter you are now officially the ‘Top Fan’ complete with badge, check it out!) Wink ooops I said mention no names! Wink

As my days out with the camera have been rather ‘limited’ recently I can’t think of any funny stories that I can tell you and I certainly haven't been on any comedy middle of the night 'badger stake outs' recently!!. I do however have a nice little success story about an extremely rare Horsefly, but to ensure that I keep coming back I will save that one for my next post! So rather than rambling on anymore, I’ll say hello once again and leave you with a few pictures so that you can see what I’ve been up to over the last three years or so also...

Cheers

Higgy

  • Do you have any suggestions for dealing with Equisetum?

    Hi Ann,
    Great to speak again.
    It's a little late to talk about 'Horse Tail' now but you will be pleased to know that my garden also has it and in our back field it grows four foot tall!!! I feel your pain!!
    I will pop back on tomorrow at a more sensible hour to discuss further.
    Best regards
    Higgy
  • Thanks, Higgy, but there's no rush to reply--it probably will not reappear for a couple of months or more. Or at least we did not notice it last year until well after we began living here in April.
  • Just bumping up this thread. Hope all is well with you and yours, Higgy; I've been wondering what you're doing these days..
  • Thanks for bumping this thread up, Ann. It's great to see what the lovely Higgy's been up to!

    I must confess I'd like to have an idea of how big a hebe topiaria will grow. I'd got it in a little pot (well, the one I bought it in) and I'd like to have an idea of whether I just need to put it into a slightly bigger pot or whether I need to plant it in the ground and watch it run riot.
  • Hope Higgy sees this and has time to respond. I'm not much of a gardener, Clare, and I've killed off a few plants in pots over the years although most have survived. I do know that many gardeners do say that most plants are happier in the ground than in a pot, unless, of course, they are tropical plants and might suffer in winter here in the UK unless protected! In the meantime, here is what the RHS says about your Hebe: "Suggested planting locations and garden types:
    Flower borders and beds Ground Cover Banks and Slopes Coastal Cottage & Informal Garden Rock Garden City & Courtyard Gardens Patio & Container Plants" Sounds like it is happy in either a pot or the ground. Here's their link: www.rhs.org.uk/.../Details
  • Yeah, I read that - but the only thing it didn't mention is how big it'll grow. I've yet to decide if it's going into the ground or a pot outside - but if it will be a pot I'd like an idea of how big a pot.
  • Hi Clare, I have had and still have a Hebe (different types) and they were/are in the ground. We have very sandy soil and where this one is and when the sun comes round to the west it is in the shade. I got it from a friend a couple of years ago, plonked it in the ground, gave it a good watering, spoke nicley to it, and asked it to grow! To my amazement it took root and last year and this had beautiful purple flowers. It is roughly 2 feet highl and deep and 3 feet high. I would think if you put it in a pot, then a large 18 inch planter. I will try and get a photo and add it here, just to give you an idea.

  • Clare, I think the usual idea is that if the plant is not going into the ground that you choose a new pot which is only very slightly bigger than the one it is in at the moment. Most plants seem to do better if they are only gradually moved into larger and larger pots, and if they are not moved more often than once a year. As for ultimate size, the RHS site says it is compact, whatever that means! You could always put it into an inexpensive plastic pot which is slightly bigger than the one it is in now until you find the final size of the Hebe (but I expect you knew that!)
  • Clare, this site says in 5 -10 years the Hebe topiaria can grow to maturity, max up to 0.5 m high and max 1 m spread: www.shootgardening.co.uk/.../hebe-topiaria
  • Unknown said:
    I think the usual idea is that if the plant is not going into the ground that you choose a new pot which is only very slightly bigger than the one it is in at the moment. Most plants seem to do better if they are only gradually moved into larger and larger pots, and if they are not moved more often than once a year. As for ultimate size, the RHS site says it is compact, whatever that means! You could always put it into an inexpensive plastic pot which is slightly bigger than the one it is in now until you find the final size of the Hebe (but I expect you knew that!)

    Thanks, Ann - that's very helpful.  I'm very new to this gardening business and my knowledge could be easily written on our Prime Minister's conscience.