On 14/6/06 12:29, in article
, "La Puce"
wrote:


Sue wrote:
I agree with that. You can try to go along with nature, but only up to a
point.
Although I call the area down at the end of our plot the 'Wild Garden'
and let the grass grown long and the wild flowers seed around, it's
still managed and not really wild. Some plants turn up on their own and
are welcome (except the marestail), but if I didn't step in and enforce
a bit of order now and then it'd all revert to scrub in no time. For a
start I'd soon be overrun with sycamore blowing in from next door,
brambles introduced by birds and oak saplings from acorns planted by
squirrels and jays.

That's when you introduce chickens! They are great at eating pests,
seeds and fantastic at scratching the soil to a wonderful fine tilth,
manuring as they go along, ready in no time for you to plant a crop )

They're also great at eating your plants, as I discovered many years ago. I
wish now that I could recall which plants but I DO recall that they were
speedily confined to their pen again.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(email address on website)

On 14/6/06 18:14, in article , "K"
wrote:

snip
I also look after a Nature Park, and there we are
deliberately trying a relatively light touch a) because we're trying to
produce a wildlife habitat b) because we can't guarantee an endless
supply of volunteers, so we'd like the area to be self-sustaining. But
even so we're doing an awful lot of meddling! snip

I don't think there's a square inch of the British Isles that isn't
'managed' to some degree. It might be by something like swaling, it might
be by restricting access to it or easing access to it but I doubt seriously
that there is anywhere that man doesn't have a hand in some way or other.

--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(email address on website)

I don't think there's a square inch of the British Isles that isn't
'managed' to some degree.


Just like the 'control' over this newsgroup?

Mike


--
------------------------------------------------
Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association
www.rnshipmates.co.uk
International Festival of the Sea 28th June - 1st July 2007

In message m, VX
writes
On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 22:59:20 +0100, tom&barbara wrote
(in message .com):

I leave quite a few ' weeds' to grow in my garden because I see them as
just wild flowers. Don't know the name of some of them but one is the
creeping buttercup. I have another yellow flowering wild plant and a
tall pink one, also some huge daisies. Anyway isn't a weed anything
which is growing where you don't want it too?

So long as it flowers it is pretty safe in my garden Rupert :-) I am
just madly in love with nature full stop.

Gail :-)

I'm pulling out a lot of weeds now and some of them might actually be nice
things to let grow- if only I knew which ones they were. For example I'm
pulling out a lot of clover lately and I have it in the back of my mind
somewhere that it is a fairly benign plant. Could be wrong about that though.

What would be really useful is a book or web page that informs about wild
flowers and -most importantly- shows which ones would be tame enough to keep.
I don't suppose there is such a book or web site in existence....?

A book that is well worth looking at is 'How to make a wildlife garden'
by Chris Baines and the wild plant identification sites I tend to use
a
http://www.reticule.co.uk/flora/ - an excellent Q&A type database and
for photographs the thumbnails section of http://www.ukwildflowers.com/

--
Robert

The message
from Robert contains these words:

In message m, VX
writes

What would be really useful is a book or web page that informs about wild
flowers

There are loads; try any bookshop. I like Collins Guide.

and -most importantly- shows which ones would be tame enough to keep.
I don't suppose there is such a book or web site in existence....?

A book that is well worth looking at is 'How to make a wildlife garden'
by Chris Baines

Yes, and there are a fair number of other "wildgarden" books, some of
them very beautifully illustrated with hand painting.. Most libraries
will have both kinds of book in stock. For some extraordinary reason,
there are usually a fair number of them on sale second hand in charity
shops too.

"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from Robert contains these words:

snip

and -most importantly- shows which ones would be tame enough to keep.
I don't suppose there is such a book or web site in existence....?

snip

For some extraordinary reason,
there are usually a fair number of them on sale second hand in charity
shops too.

LOL - how true.