Sixteen Rosebarn Avenue

Sixteen Rosebarn Avenue Our garden in Exeter as it changes and evolves over the seasons and the years

Fame at last! Our bird day spa made it into the letters page of October’s RHS - Royal Horticultural Society magazine!
05/10/2026

Fame at last! Our bird day spa made it into the letters page of October’s RHS - Royal Horticultural Society magazine!

04/10/2026

When our old metal watering can got a hole in its bottom I decided to repurpose it as some kind of wildlife habitat. I set it under our Sugarplum tree by the fence, stuffed it with straw and put a water bowl about 30cm away and left it alone for a couple of months. This week I set up my trail camera to see if anything had decided to call the watering can home and I’m delighted to say that we have a resident mouse!

Our White Ghosts drying out in the greenhouse ready for Halloween 🎃
04/10/2026

Our White Ghosts drying out in the greenhouse ready for Halloween 🎃

We all know that leaving logs in your beds is a great way to encourage wildlife into your garden. Initially they create...
29/09/2026

We all know that leaving logs in your beds is a great way to encourage wildlife into your garden. Initially they create a habitat for woodlice, centipedes, beetles and spiders which in turn encourages birds into feed.

Overtime they soak up water which helps in wet winters and rot down which improves soil structure and nutrient levels.

Like many, I used to put them at the back of beds where they wouldn’t be seen but this year I’ve decided to incorporate them into the overall planting scheme and make features of them. I’m lucky in that a friend let me take some pretty hefty logs from his garden and have placed them where they can be seen in and amongst the planting.

So they not only bring the benefits for wildlife to new parts of the garden but also act as a feature in their own right. After all they have a beauty all of their own.

We all know lawns are a bit of a damp squib when it comes to providing a rich, diverse habitat for wildlife but for most...
27/09/2026

We all know lawns are a bit of a damp squib when it comes to providing a rich, diverse habitat for wildlife but for most of us lawns are an essential part of our outside spaces. Ours is no exception and we have been scratching our heads to see if there was anything we could do to make ours a little bit friendlier for wildlife.

While we were pontificating the long, hot, dry summer intervened. Our lawn has always been a bit of a tatty old thing. Seventy years old sitting on a bed of compacted clay it’s always struggled to look good. And this year it virtually threw in the towel.

Given the direction of travel in our climate we decided we needed a lawn that could tolerate drought, tolerate the levels of traffic from people and dogs, look good and provide something for our garden’s wildlife.

So we have scarified, aerated, top dressed and overseeded with a grass and clover mix (the exact mix is in the photo). Next year we are hoping that we should have a thicker, lusher lawn which will be covered in white clover flowers which will provide plenty of sustenance for our pollinators.

Of course we will continue to mow the lawn but with the mower on its highest setting and definitely leave it alone during no mow May. I know it looks horrible now but our eyes and hopes are fully focused on a revived and wildlife friendly lawn next year.

24/09/2026

This is one of our soft fruit beds which is against an east facing fence. For the last five years we have tried to use wires to train our various berries with little success. The berry branches always seemed to have a mind of their own, particularly the tummelberry and the wires just didn’t offer enough of a framework. We have now solved that problem and have, at last, a tidy and hopefully more productive bed.

All it took was three lengths of industrial rebar from our local builders merchant and a bit of bodging with an angle grinder and bits and bobs left over from previous projects.

Now we can see where the bushes are growing, get them tied in and shaped to maximise fruiting. An added bonus is that we can now train our quince tree into the perfect fan!

All done for less than £100!

Eight days have gone by since I built the teasel bucket so I thought it was time to check in with it to see how things w...
22/09/2026

Eight days have gone by since I built the teasel bucket so I thought it was time to check in with it to see how things were progressing. And we have mini-beasts!

Garden spiders have been weaving their webs and I managed to find a wood louse, or chiggypig as we call them in this part of Devon, making their way happily up one of the stalks in the morning sunshine.

We haven’t had any visits from the goldfinches yet so I’m wondering if there are easier pickings for them out in the flower beds and hedges 🤔

Two new bucket bird tables for the garden, this time created from cardoon seed heads. I’ve chopped and dropped the stem...
20/09/2026

Two new bucket bird tables for the garden, this time created from cardoon seed heads. I’ve chopped and dropped the stems to provide ground habitats for insects and spiders and stuffed the cardoon tops into a couple of florists buckets set into the flower beds. The buckets have drainage holes so I’m not expecting any problems with standing or stagnant water in them and anything looking to make a home in them aren’t in any danger of getting flooded out.

The seed heads should provide seeds and nesting material for the garden birds as well as a home to more spiders and invertebrates.

I know there is a strong argument for leaving them on the plant but to be honest the plants had finished their lifecycle and had dried out completely so they won’t suffer by being put into pots. The plant bases have been left intact so no loss to wildlife there and the dried stems, having been chopped up and left, will provide even more habitat over autumn and winter. And a I have a couple of attractive features to liven up what would be some very dull herbaceous borders over winter. Win-Win!

18/09/2026

Damselflies making use of the new pond to mate and lay eggs

As the Autumn tidy up continues in the garden we have taken the opportunity to create a very funky habitat pile. We’ve ...
17/09/2026

As the Autumn tidy up continues in the garden we have taken the opportunity to create a very funky habitat pile. We’ve seen several examples of these when visiting RHS Rosemoor and on TV and wanted to make one ourselves. They are usually made with three poles tied together to form a wigwam which is then stuffed with clippings, prunings and thinnings to form a mini beast habitat.

Personally I am useless at tying knots and when my eyes settled on a corten steel obelisk in one of the flower beds I realised I had a ready made solution. We have stuffed it with the thatch taken up from scarifying the lawn, teasel stalks, cardoon stalks, Phlomis seed heads and stalks and crumpled up cardoon leaves.

It took us a couple of days to fill it up and every time we went to put things in there were dozens of little spiders running about across it.

These piles are also great for amphibians who can keep warm and undisturbed in them along with mice who can use the contents for nest building.

Best thing of all? It cost us nothing and required no extra effort!

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