Through A Hedge Backwards

                                                                                                                       Wild rose by Jo Sinclair

My pocket-sized garden looks as though it's been dragged through a hedge backwards. The borders are a mess and wild with weeds. But the hedgerow look is proving fruitful. Among forget-me-nots, herb robert, wood avens, ribwort plantain, greater celendine, ivy, wild rose, fox-glove and honeysuckle a billowing thicket of raspberries is coming into flower and blackcurrants and redcurrants hang in green clusters. Late last night I was outside the house as a hedgehog made a beeline. I watched it go under my gate and do the rounds. This looks like a regular routine. The busy creature didn't pause by the pond but disappeared into the mint, crunched loudly on a couple of beetles or snails, then sped off into the night. Yes, sped; it did not trundle. Maybe the wind alarmed it - the fencing was banging about quite a bit, limbering up for today's storms.

Last year, my first spring at this address, my plants were very vulnerable to pests in the bare garden.  This year the better cover has attracted a beneficial eco-system of biological control such as my hedgehog visitor. The currant bush leaves were curling up with greenfly and blackfly but by the time I decided to do something about it, an army of ants was at work. I left them to it.

I haven't yet provided a house for the hedgehog. I must get round to it. It could be a den for hoglets, or a hibernaculum for later in the year.