mystery pests and the problem with chopped bark

I went down the garden to plant out a tray of primroses I got at the farm shop (twelve chunky module grown plants for a fiver.  I had some before and they were excellent).  Something has been digging again.  Looking at where the holes were and the remains of leaves lying around I worked out it had gone for the variegated leaf arums.  From the scale of the holes this wasn't a mouse or a vole.  Rabbits?  Badgers?  I can't blame the cats for not taking on badgers.  We were chatting a few evenings ago about how nowadays you can get small motion sensitive infrared cameras mounted in a waterproof box, that store their own data for several weeks so don't need linking to a computer.  I think we might need one sooner rather than later.  I want to know what it is and where it's getting in.  (A friend rigged up a camera on the end of his garage to find out what was setting off his dogs at one o'clock every morning, attached to an old PC in the garage.  Unfortunately the noise of the fan or the faint light from the box scared off whatever it was, because it never came again, except on the one night when the system was switched off for some reason).  Maybe on this basis I don't need a camera, just something that makes a little noise and emits some light.

On a completely different topic, anybody who suggests that chopped bark over mypex makes a good surface for a path hasn't tried living with the results for any length of time.  I had this along the end of the house by the dustbins, and after a few years the bark has composted down and weeds grow in it freely.  I'm now having to pull up the weeds, and scrape up the rotted bark (which would be a jolly nice mulch if it weren't full of weed seeds).  I shall use stones instead.  In fact to start with I shall use all the stones I find while weeding that aren't especially attractive.  I found another today with a hole in it.  Only a small one, but every little helps.

hedge cutting and the uses of twigs

Today was a beautiful day for working outside.  The sun shone, it wasn't raining or windy.  Perfect weather, in fact, for getting things done that require a chainsaw.  We took the top out of some field maples, Acer campestre, that were outgrowing their space in the boundary hedge between us and the neighbouring farm.  Field maple is a beautiful plant, the leaves turning a vivid butter yellow in the autumn, but it is vigorous, wanting to make a medium sized tree if left to its own devices.  The birds will be starting to think about nest sites before too long, so any hedge cutting needs to be done fairly soon.

The larger branches will be seasoned over the summer and used as firewood next winter.  The smaller bits went through the shredder and will be used to mulch the paths around the compost bins.  An apparently huge pile of twigs makes a very small amount of wood chippings, so we never have enough.  As I shredded I thought how nowadays woody prunings are generally treated as waste, to be disposed of somehow, crammed into the family car and taken to the tip, or burnt on the bonfire, or most annoyingly dumped in farm gates and lay-bys (indeed, some wretched person has been dumping pyracantha prunings and even a piece of disgarded box topiary in the entrance to our spinney).  In the past the twigs of at least some native species were useful.  I was reading a gardening encyclopedia written in the middle of the last century by the wonderful Arthur Hellyer, and he describes building land drains by digging a trench (1 in 40 slope sufficient) and filling the bottom of it with bundles of hazel twigs, which will carry the water away after the trench is backfilled.  It will, he says, last for many years, provided that a sufficient quantity of twigs is used.  He does not elaborate on how many is sufficient.  Indeed, in wet areas great medieval cathedrals such as Ely were built on rafts of twigs, and Brunel used the same method for his railways.  Alder was often used, because it resists rot when wet, or hazel was pretty good.

managing for wildlife

Our little wood was designated a site of wildlife interest last year.  The consultants who surveyed the area identified it as a possible doormice corridor.  I'm slightly bemused by this, not least because nobody asked us if they could come and do a doormouse survey, but it is a good little bit of woodland with a lot of wildlife and some moderately rare ground flora including opposite leaved golden saxifrage.  If there are doormice as well so much the better.  The Essex Wildlife Trust is keen that we sign up to manage it for wildlife, and drew up a management plan for us.  Today I actually implemented part of the plan by planting some hawthorn bare root whips in a gappy bit of hedge the wildlife officer had pointed out.  I put rabbit guards on them too, otherwise they wouldn't last the week.  I suspect that this bit of hedge may be struggling because it is under the canopy of a large oak, looking at it again, and I might get a few hazel whips to plant behind the hedge line as well.

Part of the wood was originally managed as coppice, and the largest stools are up to 1.8m diamater, which makes them pretty old.  They haven't been cut for decades, and we've agreed to let the wildlife trust's contractor cut some of them to let more light in and start introducing a more mixed age structure.  Part of me worries that once wind gets into the wood it could topple the remaining trees, but without coppicing they are one by one falling over anyway.  We went around with the wildife trust officer and the contractor last week, marking the trees to come down with a pot of left over red acrylic paint.  By the time we'd finished we'd got paint on the contractor's waterproof jacket, the kitchen towel and the cat.  The wildlife officer thought he might have a spare owl box about the place he could let us have.  There are lots of tawnies but it would be wonderful to have barn owls, and it wouldn't be a bad site for them, with quite a lot of rough grass on the neighbouring farms and about as far from a dual carriageway as you can get around here.  According to The Barn Owl Trust collisions with fast moving traffic is one of the leading causes of death in barn owls.  Of course we could build our own box, but that might not happen any time soon, what with the great decking project and everything.