Category: Pets & wildlife

Gardens are about people but about animals too. In this category there are stories about the native animal and bird visitors to your garden – good and bad! – including possums, squirrels, deer, koalas, lizards, brush turkeys, kookaburras and lorikeets. On a more micro scale, no garden could survive without its worms, bees and other insects, spiders and microflora. Many of us also have home pets that need to be part of our gardens, including dogs and cats, but also productive animals like chickens and ducks.

Camellia minus all flowers and buds Who will rid me of the troublesome beasts?

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Help!! The deer are somehow getting into our garden again. Can our international GardenDrum support network come to the rescue with some advice? I thought I had solved the problem 18 months ago when we got the front gates working again and put up deer fencing along a low section of the boundary wall of our garden in Argyll in the west of Scotland. Continue reading →

A section of honeycomb from a topbar hive Keeping bees

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Mike Crosby was busy planting his suburban Tauranga garden with as many fruit trees as he could fit in when he noticed something was missing – bees. A bit of internet research later and Mike had plans for a topbar hive, a DIY hive that lets bees build their comb beneath a wooden bar, thought to mimic nature more closely than a box-style hive. He now has two topbar hives and a three-box Langstroth hive – the latter contains 20,000 to 30,000 bees, while the topbar hives hold fewer. (More information about topbar hives available here) Continue reading →

Nemo, King of the Vegge Patch Cats, cabbages and conflict

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Here are six practical tips for keeping cats out of freshly worked beds, and in favour with you! Being equally passionate about gardening and animals can be a recipe for conflict. Picture this: A constructive morning spent in the garden, digging lovely, crumbly home-made compost into the soil, planting seedlings or sowing seed. Despite the aching back I look at the patch and already see it filled with flowers. Continue reading →

The channel broadened and the hand of man became less obvious The wonderful water rat

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I was awash in a flurry of the facts and figures, joys and anxieties that are an inescapable conclusion to the business of writing a book. Around midday I downed tools and headed out to Oakleigh, in middle Melbourne, to take the first car that I have ever owned for its first service – three months overdue. Continue reading →

Crib Point Community Garden, called 'The Crib' Crib Point Community Garden

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Crib Point is a small town on Western Port Bay on the Mornington Peninsula. It is mainly known for its naval base, HMAS Cerberus, but since 2006 it can also claim a thriving community garden. In that year a small group of local people was granted permission by the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council to establish a garden on part of the old school playground adjacent to the Crib Point Community House which was the original primary school for the town. Continue reading →

Miscanthus capensis In search of the giant Miscanthus

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Snuggled away on the mountainous border of the Free State and Lesotho is the Golden Gate National Park, a reserve dedicated to the preservation of southern Africa’s amazing and extensive grass species. I took the week off and headed to Lesotho to look for a giant grass called Miscanthus capensis, that is in full flower at the moment and is one of only two Miscanthus species that occur in southern Africa. Continue reading →

Itchy and Scratchy Itchy and scratchy

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Itchy and Scratchy have been living in my garden for over a year now, providing us with about 12 large eggs a week, with dark orange yolks from all the greens they eat. Unfortunately, over the last two months, egg production has dwindled. Itchy has got it into her hen bird brain that she wants chicks. Continue reading →