Day 79

Sunday 07 June

I’ve finally added some water to our garden today. I bought a small, simple pond liner (80cm x 60cm) for twenty-five quid, dug a hole and stuck it in. We had some slate from our old lean to roof which I used as an overhang. Some logs from the old laburnum tree, that used to grow in the same spot, became the edging. Our next-door neighbour kindly donated some plants which were anchored into a layer of grit and stones at the bottom. I filled it with rainwater from the water butt.

Within minutes our resident male blackbird came to check it out, as did the obligatory robin. I say resident blackbird, he is actually nesting in our neighbours summer house which borders our garden. He has been very busy over the past couple of weeks swooping in and out of the roof overhang (I’ve used that word twice in one post!). There must be chicks.

So, now the garden is feeling pretty complete. It has all the main ingredients; trees (large and small), shrubs, flowers, grasses, a veggie plot and now water. I have never been so interested in the garden as I have this year and it’s all due to the lockdown. Again, a sign that I am being more aware of what is in front of me. It’s the one patch of this planet that I can affect directly, immediately and forever. It’s also the patch that no one else can destroy, dump on or pollute.

If you are fortunate enough to have a garden, you have a moral obligation to protect it and care for it. Part of that duty is to make it welcoming to other creatures that need to use it. The patchwork of gardens in the UK covers around 10 million acres – that’s more than all of our nature reserves combined. In a typical city, gardens make up about a quarter of it’s total area but, sadly, the trend is to cover them up with slabs, bricks or concrete or, even worse, to build on them.

We need to see each garden plot, no matter how big or small, as a unique part of the world’s patchwork of natural spaces. Each one we lose leaves a little empty hole. Add all those holes together, and that’s quite a gap.