Underdown Garden Service Station
I have always had green fingers, but very little opportunity to green them. This all changed when we became proud owners of our first house and our West facing garden in Southwick on a road pleasantly named Underdown. Given the road name it is no surprise that the downs is a mere 0.5 mile north of us as the crow flies or the bee buzzes, this makes it very handy for walks up on to the downs where we can drop down to the Adur estuary and appreciate the stunning Sussex views and landscapes. Our urban position between the coastline at Southwick and the Downs of Mill Hill make us the perfect stop, or service station as our Gardens and Greenspaces coordinator Amy Hurn calls them, for wildlife moving and migrating between coastal, urban and farmed landscapes going about their daily or annual business.
Given our unique location we felt it was our duty to turn our little garden into one of the best service stations (Gloucester services is the best in the country apparently) around and serve as many species as we could with a bit of respite, food and shelter as they move through or take time out in our garden. To this end, I had a job on my hands, because the people who lived here before us were not particularly green fingered and the garden was not particularly welcoming.
There was a lot of concrete in our garden for a start, so that was our first job. With drills, sledgehammer and crow bars we spent many a weekend and evening breaking, lifting and hauling slabs of concrete out of the garden and to the recycling centre. Not all of the concrete left the garden though, but I will come back to that later. Once most of the concrete was up it was time to plan, so many options and opportunities to do fun nature positive things, where does one start!
The Weald to Waves Gardens and Greenspaces web pages that’s where. Luckily for me I had a hot line to the fantastic Amy and our Garden ambassadors who had lots of ideas for me. Starting with ponds and compost heaps.
We are all familiar with the benefits of a compost heap in terms of enriching the soil, adding organic matter and recycling our green waste but they have the added benefit of being brilliant for wildlife too. Compost heaps are rich, moist, warm dark and cosy for many beneficial insects and invertebrates in your garden providing food for a whole host of other wildlife from hedgehogs to frogs and birds. I made my compost heap by upcycling some pallets we had and raising them off the ground slightly to increase air flow and prevent rotting. My pond project was less successful however, Charlie Harpur the head gardener at Knepp very kindly gave me some puddling clay to make my small pond, but Charlie the labrador didn’t think much of it and dig it up and drained the water. So it’s back to the drawing board on that one. The service station evolution of our garden is a marathon not a race and there will be success and failure in equal measure. It is just part of the process.
Two mini projects I am particularly proud of in our garden, both of which were pretty simple to do, were the creation of a hibernaculum and a bee hotel. The left over concrete was used to partly infill our 2m x 40cm hole, along with branches and dead wood from the garden and some drain pipe for access. The spoil from the hole was then placed back on top and seeded with wildflower seed, which is now in full bloom and attracting lots of pollinators. The hibernaculum will provide a refuge area for reptiles and amphibians and give them shelter and protection over the winter months. I sited this close to the pond, but we don’t talk about that project!
The bee hotel, very grandly named considering what it is, was the quickest and probably the most satisfying when you compare the effort with the reward. Armed with a drill and 6mm, 8mm and 10mm drill bits I set about drilling into three of the South facing fence posts in our garden. I did this in March and around May time we had leaf cutter bees using the holes for their larvae. Leaf-cutter bees are one of a number of small, solitary bees that nest in holes in plant stems, dead wood, cliffs or old walls, and fence posts with holes in. They famously cut discs out of leaves (they particularly like roses), glue them together with saliva to build the ‘cells’ in which their larvae live. The larvae hatch and develop, pupating in autumn and hibernate over winter. Here is a picture of the 8mm drill holes and the leaf-cutter bee doing it thing.
The pièce de résistance and the most time consuming, but perhaps the most rewarding was the Underdown Wildflower Meadow. There were two New Zealand evergreen bushes in the garden when we arrived, but we weren’t keen on the aesthetic or the lack of benefit to flora and fauna in our garden. When these came out, we decided to strip the earth back, removing about 20cm depth of soil to try and take the nutrients out because wildflowers work best in nutrient poor soil. We then raked and levelled the soil and scattered a Salisbury Plain wildflower seed mix and a bee and butterfly wildflower seed mix, both of which suited our alkaline/clay soil. I then got green footed and pressed the seed to the soil by walking back and forth to ensure the seed made contact with the soil, we did this in October. It was then a waiting game for the next 7 months to see what came through.
Since May I have spent many a happy weekend or evening lying in my hammock at the end of the garden, admiring and observing the number of pollinators buzzing around the tufted vetch, oxeye daisy, corn marigold, poppies and cornflower. And that is just year one, I expect to see a whole host of different wildflower next year.
All of the activity and time we have spent in the garden trialling and testing and tweaking has been so very enjoyable, helping us forget the stresses of everyday life. I feel very blessed to be able to spend time in a little patch of nature that we can call our own, knowing that our service station is supporting wildlife which is then being supported by gardeners, councils, farmers and land managers across the Weald to Waves corridor. No effort is too small, everything counts, so why not set up your service station and enjoy!
Gareth Williams
Weald to Waves lead
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