I open the gate, step into the garden and look around me with a mixture of excitement and trepidation…. You see, I’m the new Project Officer for the Flatford Wildlife Garden-to-be, and this is my first sight of the garden….
The garden is in the grip of winter now, the trees a tracery of twigs against the pale sky, the ground bare and scoured after the weeks of snow cover. The old tea garden roof has collapsed under the weight of a venerable wisteria, its tortuous tangle of vines stark in the sharp winter light. The garden has an air of world-weariness; fatigue…. And yet…. Everywhere you look there are the tiny spikes of snowdrops just breaking through the cold earth… If you stop and listen, you can hear long-tailed tits calling to each other with little chiming cries from amongst the birch and alder catkins overhead. I gasp with delight as a kestrel shoots past me, dropping over the boundary ditch and into the green world of the wet woodland beyond, carrying some prize in its deadly little talons.
The garden may be sleeping, but everywhere there are signs of life stirring, carrying the promise of spring and of a new beginning for the weary old garden.