slightly raised bed! 1

good idea

*s* thanks. I've got stacks of stuff that "might come in handy" for the garden - I hate throwing anything that might be useful in some unusual way in the futre - I usually think of that way only the day *after* I've binned it, but this time I got it the right way ruond.

And I can experiment with the layout, try different configurations, to find out which works best, so it's multi-adaptable as well

old English proverb: "keep a thing for seven years and you will find a use for it"

Pretty pansies ...
they seem to like being higher up there !

sadly, the squirrels seem to prefer them at that height! they've not touched the ones on the ground, but one of those raised ones has only one very sickly plant in it now.

Are the squirrels actually eating the pansies ?

I think they must be, or at least digging them up and taking them away. There were ten in that planter and now there aren't - I found one uprooted and not looking at all well this morning, and there's only one still in place but also not looking at all well. I'm going to have to go out and buy a trolley-load of chopped chilli!

Definitely squirrels ?
Not blackbirds turfing out the compost to make nests ?

well, I've never caught anything in the act, so I might be doing the squirrels an injustice. if it's done at night i don't know how to find out who's doing it, short of rigging a tripwire to a camera! would blackbirds excavate two-three inches of bark chips to get to the soil? the other exavated pot doesn't yet have any cover, so that'd be no prob for them.

were it birds, i'd try to leave out things for them to nest in, though not baing able to suspend anything apart from tying it to the fence, it wouldn't be very secure from predators - and even on the fence the squirrels would be able to get at it