the patient gardener's weblog

I am lucky or unlucky enough to have a 1 acre garden surrounded by hedgerows and open fields, depending on your point of view. When I moved in I thought great, I now have a massive garden to play with. However what I was not quite prepared for was the wildlife that makes having a showcase garden pretty much impossible. Basically my garden is far more fertile than the surrounding fields which have been thrashed by intensive farming (….don’t get me started on that!) and hence is a magnet for badgers, moles and rabbits.

My lawns are continually wrecked by badgers and moles. Moles can legally be controlled but generally once one mole is removed another one usually moves in withing two or three weeks. Badgers are an absolute nightmare for lawns. An overnight badger attack can pretty much plough up a huge area of lawn requiring hours of work just to fill in and level the “furrows” with soil. Very little can be done about badgers as they are protected. Then there are the rabbits which cause less damage to the lawn but great damage to my plants, some of which are more susceptible than others. Parts of my garden look more like Fort Knox than a garden as it is the only way to keep the rabbits out. So as you can see a “dream” country garden is not necessarily all it is cracked up to be!