Ideas for Natural Area in my garden

[kellyb]

Hi lovely peeps!

Hope youve all had a wonderful weekend in the sun!

I was wondering if you could all possibly give me some ideas about your gardens, and how I can plan for a natural area in my garden...

Any ideas / things that would do would be amazing!

Many thanks

Kelly x

[blue bear]

we have a little corner of my garden that grows wild, long grass, weeds etc. We have three logs that are rotting that provide homes for mini beasts, also upturned buckets and a net.
The children have free access to magnifying glasses and varying pots. I have a sign on the fence that says bug area.

just along from that we have a digging pit with diggers, next to that is a plastic elc kitchen with pans etc for cooking mud pies.

[moggy]

A log pile is a really good habitat, and we have a small pond with a wrought iron gate over it for safety (I can stand on it!)- we have frogs!

[sarah707]

we are lucky enough to have enough space for a bug house and rotting logs for minibeasts in a corner of the garden.

I often find the children 'rescuing' slugs and taking them over to the corner!

[jumping j]

We have a small triangle in the bottom corner that has a log pile, bird table and feeding station. I've put some wild flowers in which I hope will grow and reseed themselves and is largely left to look after itself, it's the first year I've done it so it's still very new in it's growth!

[catswhiskers]

I also collect mini logs and bits of trees sawn off. My garden backs onto a park so when they saw up the trees I'm over there collecting the logs.

For the past 6/7 years I've had a 'fairy garden'. I buy lots of fairy ornaments/figurines, you can get them cheap at bootsales, silver fairies in chemists, and make a fairy garden. Then add plastic/stone ladybirds, frogs, spiders etc. and the kids love upturning them to see the slugs, worms and ants etc.

[PixiePetal]

My garden is a little too natural! It is big but mostly lawn. We live on the farm so plenty of nature about. Hard to keep nettles and weeds under control cows to watch when they are in the field behind/being milked and a wood on the farm to explore

I sat eating dinner outside this evening watching an adult wren moving her young to a new location - after our dog caught one of her fledgelings . There were 4 babes and it took them an hour to all get up to the shed gutter where she was leading them! Wish I had mindees here then, it was so nice to watch.

I have a bird feeding station - all sorts of visitors from blue tits/woodpeckers/goldfinch/sparrowhawk (but he was after the blue tits!) and loads of others

[md0u0131]

we have a bird table and feeders, a bug hotel (we made it out of bamboo), wild flowers, log pile, hedge (good for finding wee beasties in), buddlia (sp) is really good for butterflies, a vege patch, bird boxes, composter, baskets of shells