Sit and watch chicks hatching from your living room (or anywhere in the world)

Springwatch gained a huge audience this year with their 24/7 coverage of different breeds of  chicks hatching in different nest box boxes , it was pretty amazing to see . You can easily have this too, watch your own nest boxes whenever and wherever you want with a bird box camera, you can even watch streaming on the internet from wherever you are.  Handykam stock lots of different kits and their site is full of useful information helping you to choose the right system. 

I will be putting a system into a garden design I am building and will update with you how this goes in the Spring. 

A Splash of Autumn Colour

With most flowering plants now done and dusted for the year (or on their last legs) this plant is a must for late season colour. Helianthus "Lemon Queen" is a real beast and needs to go at the back of a border, reaching up to 2m in height .It does need full (ish) sun but does not seem to mind soil type, I have them growing in two different planting designs, one in clay soil the other in a dry, poor soil and they are both doing as well as each other.

 Being a late flowering plant consider planting Helianthus "Lemon Queen" with  tall Miscanthus which is also flowering at the moment. I took this picture  at the weekend so you can see it's at its best at the moment and also providing much needed nectar to bees late in the year. 

Helianthus "Lemon Queen" is available from Crocus 

You plant it - we'll come

Within 4 weeks of planting a group of 12" high Monardas they are now 3 feet high and full of bursting scarlet red flowers. You can see why this plant is also known as 'bee balm'. 

This is an excellent plant for attracting bees and butterfly's, quickly establishes itself and is a rapid grower, perfect for filling in spaces in your border and can be left over winter with beautiful seed heads. 

  

Hedges

If your planning on planting a hedge next year then now is the time you need to be organising it. The cheapest way of buying hedging is from now until March. This is because it is the only time of year you can buy 'bare root' plants, simply they are just pulled from open ground in the nursery, bundled together and sent by courier to you. This can only be done until March as the plants are 'dormant' however the roots will need to be kept moist so as soon as you receive them you will need to 'heel' them in if not quite ready to plant.

You can buy hedging plants up to around 7 ft high so if there's a boundary fence that needs replacing why not think about a hedge instead. I know what I would rather look at! It acts as a perfect foil for your plants, is an excellent home for insects and nesting birds and doesn't even need painting every year.

If you would like further help on selecting and sourcing  the right hedge for your garden and  would like to contract our services to plant your new hedge then please get in touch.

Garden gifts at Christmas

All serious gardeners need and want are a decent hand fork, hand trowel, border fork, fork, border spade, spade, good loppers and last but the most important secateurs. Forget all that nonsense that the magazines are trying to say is the next best thing, I can't even remember the name of that hand gadget that proposed to revolutionise  gardening, the hand spork or something, the thing with the spokes poking out of it, all you had to do was turn it and it pulled out weeds and everything. If something like that was available and worked don't you think all us gardeners would of invented it a long time ago, believe me, we get alot of time to think of tools that might make our life easier.

If you want to buy a present for a gardener and it's in the budget then i suggest Felco secateurs, they are about £35 and are the professionals choice, I've had mine for about 5 years now, not like that cheap rubbish from DIY stores and every good garden center carries spares for them, new blades, new springs etc. They come in about 7 models I think, large handed, small handed, left handed and there is also a model that's particularly good for arthritis sufferers. I will not post a link to anyone specific for these just google Felco secateurs and find the supplier that suits you but I promise give these to a gardener and they will be ecstatic.

Make your own suet bird balls

I remember making these at school but no doubt there is an EU directive now stopping kids from carrying this out at school. If you've got children then this is a perfect way of keeping them occupied on a rainy day and getting them interested in wildlife at the same time (and birds absolutely love these).

What you will need.

• Big mixing bowl and spoon
• Saucepan
• Old yoghurt pots or used toilet roll tubes
• Wild bird seed mix
• Suet or lard

1. Melt the lard in the saucepan and add the bird seed mix, you'll want a ratio of 1 part suet to two parts dry mixture. When all the fat is absorbed, put to one side.
2. Take the yogurt pot and put a small hole through the bottom of it and pass the string through, leave plenty of spare at either end as you will need to tie a knot in one end and the other will hang it from the tree.
3. Holding the string in the centre of the pot, start packing the suet mixture into the pot until full to the top.
4. Place in fridge overnight and then once hardened cut off the pot, tie a knot in the string to stop the ball falling off and voila, it's ready to hang from a tree.