4 2009-11-01T08:07:56-08:00 false 7.06am All Saints Day The weather station says -2C, my thermometer says +1C and it is foggy. I finished reading Notes from the Garden, a collection of articles from the UK's Guardian newspaper, some time ago. One of the most fascinating and amazing articles is the one in my headline. Written in July 1998, it is about a garden in a suburban area in the middle of England, 80 ft long by 40 ft wide which has "a small pond, a clipped lawn, a couple of ash trees, a row of runner beans and a clothes line." It's owner Dr Jennifer Owen, a retired biologist, has been keeping a meticulous record of wildlife in the garden since 1970. Dr Owen and her husband have recorded 23 species of butterfly, 343 of moth, 93 kinds of hoverfly, 347 different beetles, 83 kinds of sawfly, 533 species of parasitic wasp, 53 of bee and 70 species of spider. Fortynine species of birds, 17 species of slug and dozens of invertebrates and amphibians have come to the garden. "Foxes, squirrels, bats, woodmice, voles, newts, toads and frogs, too, all live in or visit the 24 sorts of grass, the 384 species of cultivated plants and weeds, the fungi and the trees... something like 3,000 species, or 10 per cent of all Britain's known natural life, come to her quarter-acre patch." "Her work is growing proof that suburban gardens might be the last refuge of British nature. Thes more natural diversity in much of suburbia, she says, than in great swaths of the countryside, which for 50 years has been systematically denuded of life with pesticides and chemicals and the ploughing-up of hedgrows and habitats... Unnoticed and seldom celebrated, the British garden is now an important conservation and wildlife resource... This garden is not an oasis. Much of its richness is dependent on other gardens and the insects and other life in it range across the whole." Thirteen wasps that are new to Britain have been found and one that is new to science. "Dr Owen's tips to attract wildlife: Plant your garden with as many flowers as you can to attract insects. Birds like berries and fruit. Avoid bare soil and concrete. Plant everything. Don't worry about the weeds. Give your garden as much physical variety as possible, with different heights and habitats for birds, insects and other life to live in. Ponds attract all kinds of wildlife. Provide a mixture of open space and shade in your garden. Prolong the flowering season of plants. Dead-head them. Avoid chemicals and pesticides." I am sure that North American gardens are as important a resource to wildlife, now do we have any biologists among our gardeners that can document wildlife in their garden? Seventeen species of slugs! I thought that there were just plain, spotted and banana. This week I will go to England and no doubt will see some suburban and country gardens, not that November is the best time for seeing them. Photos: I have yet to identify this species of slug; slug eggs; my brother in his Northumberland, UK, garden planting apple and pear trees; the walled garden at Alnwick Gardens; a lily pond at the Japanese Memorial Garden at New Denver, BC. 3 false 70358 false false false Entry 2009-10-31T17:00:00-07:00 DMY 26261 Public 2009-11-01T08:12:19-08:00 1175 -2 C