A Stumpery created in less than 2 days !!

Hello friends,  as  I previously indicated Mike and I were keen to use the lovely slices of Oak trunk and logs which came from a dead Oak tree that had to be felled so we decided to create a Stumpery area for bugs, insects, birds inclusive so after preparing the area yesterday we spent the whole day toiling away to get this feature completed.    I can't tell you how heavy the Oak slices were and because of my weak right arm (tennis elbow) I had to rely on a lot of help and muscle from Mike, however between us we did really well and managed to roll (with a struggle ! )  a lot of the Oak into place.    I wanted to create an area for all wildlife so added perching twigs/branches and I nipped to the local garden centre to buy a wooden barrel which I could use as a bird drinking/bathing area amongst the stumpery.     Anyway, without further ado, here are the photos of todays work which was the main project day.    Yesterday we prepared the ground digging out a lot of top soil as the Oak had to sit bedded down slightly.

This is the area we chose at the far corner of the garden which is a mix of shade mostly but some filtered sunlight too.     You can just make out Mike by the area we used.

These are some of the large Oak slices and logs we incorporated in the stumpery ....

and yes, I did my share of the soil shifting yesterday  !!   This is the basic shape and we took the top soil down to a good 6 - 8 inches.

now the first Oak slices into place,   ignore the wooden barrel as that was repositioned to a different place once we got further into the project;   we used two wooden posts to help position the heavy Oak into place as you couldn't roll them straight on to the soil as they would have bedded in and not moved !     ...

and now a series of the progress throughout today ....

I wanted to place perching areas for the birds around the back of the stumpery and to the right hand side ....

You can just about make out the branches for perches and the wooden barrel now in place ....

Fortunately with such a large garden I was able to dig out some existing ferns to start placing in the Stumpery

We also added some other shrubs plants and three more ferns, one a large one with lots of unopened fronds

I placed a perch above the wooden barrel for the birds ....

this is a side view of the area which just kept growing   lol

The large Oak slice at the front had two rather nice ornate knots so we placed it front facing ........

it was the heaviest of all the Oak so we needed a tea break after getting this one in place  !!!

the addition of a plastic bendy bucket, cut down to size as a liner for the wooden barrel.    We added a double off cut forked tree branch which we

immersed in the water bucket so the smaller birds have somewhere to perch if they just want to drink and not drown  lol !

We added a log edge border and  a Pieris shrub I had spare   ............

View from the other side

and view from the front

you can see the perch I fixed above the water barrel

lots of secured branches lateral and vertical for the birds and we added shrubs to the background area

I will try add more photos as it settles and matures.     Just amazed we got so much work done today :)