April Update 2018

Spring is Here at Last!

It’s been long miserable winter and despite the weather still being pretty poor, signs of spring are here at long last.

Buds are breaking into leaf, Daffodils and Hellebores are flowering their heads off and frog spawn has arrived in abundance in the pond. Birds are busy gathering up nesting material and I’ve seen a Robin checking out one of our bird boxes. This is all great to see and although we want to encourage all the wildlife we can, there is sadly one exception. You have probably seen our Duck regularly visiting the pond closely followed by her three admiring Drakes. This is fabulous to see, ducks and ponds go together, but there is a problem. The next step will be nest building and unfortunately in this case it’s not a good idea. Loftus is not a safe enough environment to rear a brood of ducklings, so if she starts to even think about this, she will be discouraged.

Paul and I have been busy with the usual spring jobs of planting, pruning, feeding and splitting plants. We are excited about how it will all look this summer as last year a lot of plants were struggling to get established.  As each year passes Loftus is only going to get bigger and better.

Our new park is the talking point at the minute especially amongst the kids. Unlike the other park which is more of a wildlife garden for the grown ups to appreciate, this one as it is designed with children in mind but still follows our overall theme for biodiversity and encourages natural play. There are trees, shrubs, grass areas, a wildflower meadow and a living willow tunnel straddling a play bark path that meanders round the park.

All this is enclosed by a natural stone wall, a hedge and self shutting gates to provide a safe environment for children to run around and play amongst nature and natural materials. The play equipment is no more than sand, tunnels, logs and children’s own wild imagination.

It will be opening shortly for all to enjoy.