The start of our wildflower garden

For quite a few years our garden has been structured, with most of the colour coming from pots rather than from flowers actually planted in the earth.

This year, Grumps decided to set aside a section of the garden to encourage wildlife.

He deliberately decided not to buy plants for this section of the garden, instead wanting to sprinkle seeds to attract birds and butterflies and to allow the flowers to grow wherever the seedlings appeared.

To involve the girls, both of them were allowed to get involved. One of the funniest moments, and our 'Great garden moment' was when Daisy was given the task of sprinkling seeds. She’s clearly just a little tot yet so Grumps lifted her to get a better angle for the seeds. Here you can see how successful the ‘spreading’ was – she literally just tipped the packet up and let all the seeds fall in a single spot!

This year has obviously been lacking in sunshine but our seeds have had plenty (and I do mean plenty) of water.

We don’t expect great results this year. Grumps tells me that most of the seeds will not really come into their own until next year. But already we have seen some wildlife using this area of the garden.

The wild flower section includes some rotting logs, cut down from trees we had in the garden which had reached the end of their life. We left the stumps for beetles and insects and the girls love looking for ladybirds.

Recently Piper found a frog in the garden. This caused lots of hilarity, particularly when Grumps caught it in a bucket to show Daisy and it jumped out just as she peered into the bucket!

We’ve also seen an increase in visits from Cyril Squirrel. He’s always visited the garden but now he seems to be becoming even more regular – although Grumps was not happy when he found Cyril had taken up residence in his bird house!

We do love our garden and we use it as often as the weather allows. The minute the sun is out we bring out the trampoline, the slide and the sandpit and the girls are happy to play outside all day long.

Grumps’ favourite place in the garden is his patio. Around 4 o’clock the sun comes around the side of the house and hits a secluded spot on the patio. Grumps says this indicates it’s time to sit down with a bottle of something cool and alcoholic and relax, watching the blue tits, gold finches and other birds that have started to visit on a regular basis.

I’ve written this post in response to a Great Garden Moments Competition being run by Furniture Village. More details of the competition can be found by clicking  this link If you love your garden as much as we love ours, then go and have a look and why not enter your own great garden moment?