Building work in garden

Hi all, I'm new here and excited to be a new member and part of this community! We have a retaining wall at the back of our garden, directly behind which are blackberry brambles and a small woodland copse. Our visitors are woodpeckers, jays, robin, blue, great and long-tailed tits, dunnock, blackbirds and wood pigeon as well as foxes, hedgehogs and mice. I have an array of feeders as well as sprinkling food on the ground and this waist-high wall where the bird bath sits. They've got used to their 7:30 feeds and wait for me! We need to have this wall completely rebuilt and my question is when would be the best time to do it and any advice about minimum disruption would be appreciated! Thank you! 

  • Any sort of work that gives disturbance is best done in winter, that way birds aren't trying to nest in bushes you may need to cut back or be disturbed by all the activity. Try to keep the clearance of the brambles to a minimum as they're superb bushes for food and shelter. At this time of year the birds are simply feeding themselves and they'll soon find alternative food sources if you need to take down feeders etc for the work. I'd probably put up some other feeders around the garden now, so they become used to plenty of alternative spots to get grub wherever the builders decide to stand with their mug of coffee

  • I agree that autumn/winter is the best time. If it's not too urgent it may be better to time it for around September /October next year as the builders going in & out will make a horrible muddy mess everywhere once the rains start! Good luck with the project.
  • Sorry for the delay in replying - that's great advice and good shout about putting other feeders up in different places now so they're used to them. Thank you!
  • Yes that's true! It's so hard to know what the right thing to do is! We moved in in March and the survey suggested that the wall would fall down within a year, and it certainly looks more and more precarious being pushed out from behind with all the woodland etc. Not sure it would survive another burst of spring. Buuuuut, maybe it would! Anyway I'm rambling sorry, thank you for the reply and advice!
  • Hello Rachel, welcome to the forum from up in the very far north of Scotland, in Caithienss. Good luck with the wall, as has already been said, now is the best time to do garden works, and by getting the feeders up the birdies will soon know where food can be found. Hope you enjoy here, we are a good bunch, any questions just ask, as you can see there will always be someone at hand to offer help and advice.