After a long wet winter spring arrived very quickly with catkins and blosson on the crab apple tree, bluebells appearing and the lawn covered in daisies and buttercups. We have already had great tits nesting in our box, and since we have come back after the holiday there is no sign of busy adults so we think the young ones must have fledged.
We have had lots of visitors to the garden as well as lots of different kinds of birds we have regular visits from a pheseant and daily visits from a large rabbit. We also have new neighbours in the fields as the farmer has brought in the ewes and their lambs.
We have started to sow our seeds, this year we have started with raddishes, tomatoes and some squash. Our strawberry runners from last year are now well established so we have planted in amongst our older plants to fill in the gaps.We have also chitted some potatoes and they are already growing very quickly.
We were also delighted to see that our little oak tree now has it's new leaves and is looking really healthy.
Wildlife Garden and Growing Area
Spring 2026
Autumn 2025
When we returned to Pre-School after the summer holidays we were delighted to see how much our pumpkins and beans had grown and we had 3 very big cucumbers ready to chop up for snack. The small strawberry runners that we had potted up in the early spring were now established and awaiting a new home.
At the beginning of October we decided to pick our pumkins and as many beans as we could reach. We found a recipe for green bean chutney and made several jars. We kept our pumpkins on our nature table before we chopped one up and made 4 delicious pumpkin pies which we all had a slice of. The other pumpkin we used as a competition to guess the weight.
Once the beans and pumpkins were picked we had a tidy up of the raised bed, but decided to leave our calendular and nasturium plants especially as we saw that there were lots of caterpillars enjoying the leaves. We identified them as cabbage white caterpillars.
Around our pond the teasels have been attracting the birds and the crap apple tree is laden with fruit.
Summer 2025
This summer we have again been very busy in our growing and wildlife area. After digging our raised bed over we added two bags of manure to enrich the soil. We took great care with our sunflower seedlings this year and kept them protected from our resident mice. By the end of the summer term they were all coming into flower as they made their way home. After the success last year with our pumpkins, we again planted two plants in our raise bed along with some beans which had started off in small pots first. At the front of the bed we planted some calendular and nasturium plants which have flowered all through the summer.
With our potatoes already in their bag we planted two cucumber plants in our large planter. Our potatoes produced a large crop which we chopped up and cooked for snack. This year our strawberries produced lots of fruit which we also enjoyed at snack time.
We kept our apple tree well watered and this year it had lots of small apples on it and our herbs continue to thrive.
Our gardening and wild life area has also had many visitors this summer, our resident robin again nested in the brambles behind the shed and it's baby chick appeared and enjoyed hopping around the plants by the greenhouse. To our surprise one day we had two ducks come to visit us, they didn't stay long but waddled their way through the long grass, across the garden and were last seen heading towards the stream across the road.
