We discovered these giant thistles on the Goodwood Estate. Standing almost two metres tall don’t they look majestic in the starkness of winter. The dried flower heads are at least 7 cm diameter!
We think they must be Cirsium eriophorum or Woolly Thistles – but will have to wait until next summer to see what the flowers look like. If they are woolly ones the flower heads will be covered in a whitey wool!
Even in the depths of winter groups of silver birch trees look so beautiful up on the Downs. They symbolise renewal and purification, love and fertility. At New Year bundles of birch twigs would be used to sweep out the spirits of the old year.
I have just finished a fantastic 10 week online course run by Oxford University on the history of landscape gardening. For my final piece of work I chose to write about the Edwardian garden designer, Harold Peto. I wanted to focus on someone who had left their legacy locally. Towards the end of the 1910s Peto was employed by the then owners of West Dean House – Willie and Evelyn James to extend the gardens. The sunken garden and the 300ft pergola are really good reminders of his style. He was particularly interested in Classical architecture, but did not want his designs just to be a reflection of the past.
Perhaps this is the motto by which he lived: Aspice, Respice, Prospice! Look to the Present, Past and Future! These words can be seen on the steps of the rebuilt sunken garden.
What a great idea! A huge cable bobbin used as the skeleton for a bug hotel. Clearly it is still a work in progess and I’m looking forward to seeing it when it is finished. Plus of course next spring and summer when hopefully it will have become a home for all kinds of insects and bees and little mammals.
There are quite a few piles of rubble in the graveyard and instead of breaking our backs taking it all to the dump, we decided to build a hibernaculum! A What?? Yes, I think I’ve spelt that right! It’s an area of rough ground with stones, sticks and rubbly bits built up and piled over with soil. With lots of air pockets any little animal can creep in to take cover from the cold or wet or even decide to hibernate for the coldest months.
The great thing for us is that this little bit of tidying up has achieved so much!
Looking after the wildlife
Hopefully creating someting interesting for passers-by to look and wonder at
And we’ve tidied the graveyard up!
Looks like we’ll soon be going into another lockdown. But the natural world trundles on just the same and this rainbow gives us hope that life is just waiting for the rain to pass
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