A garden I maintain for a customer

Like how you ve got the stripes in the lawn lovely shrubery too, I spy the bird table a bird lover I see. I bet you see a lot of wild life while gardening.

One of the joys of my job( I look after 35 customers' gardens a week) is to see all the changes happening. In ones own garden you see it every day and might not notice subtle differences but when you only see a garden for an hour a week all the little changes become very noticeable.. This particular garden has a great deal of wild life as it is wild life friendly.

My own garden was designed specifically with wildlife in mind and I have green and great spotted woodpeckers which visit regularly but many kinds of garden birds,a fox,hedgehogs,frogs and toads, and masses of bees and butterflies as I've set aside an area of wild life garden where caterpillars can do well and I've piled up rotting logs to encourage various insects.

My pond is a big wild life attractior and I have had literally hundreds of baby fogs emerge from it this year and there are great crested newts and great diving beetle.

You are so lucky to see so much wild life, I understand what you mean about noticing in your customer gardens not so much your own. A lot of people do not realise great crested newts are now protected under section 5 of the wild life and countryside act 1981 so you are very lucky to have one as they are in decline of numbers now. Ponds are the best thing to attract all sorts of wild life the birds for bathing and drinking and the little critters like you have already.

Its great you ve set aside a part of your garden for wild life, also designing your garden with wild life in mind. Have you ever thought of having a hive for the honey bee, would be benificial to your plants too, as the bee is in decline, they have been asking people to keep bees in their garden because of this. We tried a bee count here when I first came on, places like Yorkshire seem to be ok but other parts not so many at all. I have a toad and frogs in my garden and have a visit from a stray cat, the fox crosses the lane at the top by the canal which is at the end of the lane, so I get to see wild life quite regular. Last winter up until late spring I had a charm of Goldfinches visit the tree was full of them, I see all sorts but not a woodpecker like yourself you are so lucky to have 2 kinds.

A chap in the village wheere I live took some great crested newts from a pond somewhere(I don't know if this was before the moving of them was made illegal but he certainly didn't know he was doing wrong) Anyway, he has about 8 large ponds in a lovely garden packed with wonderful flowers and it is a real haven for wild life. The newts have found their way to my pond which is about 150 metres from his garden. They also live under the pot carriers on my nursery. Until a couple of years ago I had about 30 adult frogs living on my nursery and at dusk when I was watering it was difficult not to step on them! Unfortunately there is a disease going around and all the big frogs died . For a year I rarely saw a big frog but I'm pleased to say the nursery and garden has been recolonised and there are now quite a few large "regulars" on the nursery and I'm inundated by little ones which I assume came from the masses of tadpoles I had in my pond earlier this year. I remember a time a few weeks ago when all the tiny frogs were leaving the pond for the first time. I would sit by the pond near dusk and watch dozens exiting for pastures new

here's a video on my flickr pages I took of some of the tadpoles earlier this year

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/4568994216/.

Well at least the crested newts have good homes, I won't tell if you don't lol. The frogs are great to have they eat all the slugs so stops them eating your plants. Beginning of this year there was a shortage of frogs, also some where deformed so I learned some where else than here. It must of been great watching them leaving your pond will take a look at your footage. My goodness you have loads there at least they liked the crab sticks, hope it helped most survive.

This year was extraordinary for tadpoles. I stopped counting when I reached about 500 in a pond about 8 feet in diameter

You could of started a frogery lol a ot of tadpoles then.