Natural Plant Selection (Video)

Living in the countryside we are blessed to be surrounded by a wide variety of wildlife. We love to see them running through the woods, drinking from the midden or flying around the field. We maintain a live and let live policy and have tried to employ a number of different concepts in order to protect our young plantings. Unfortunately we have had a few calamities this year, mainly due to our ignorance regarding what plants were a potential target for different animals. This is a short post to give you an pictorial view of the devastation which can occur when plants aren't protected. However, as it would be mad to try to fence off each individual flower/plant we accept that some will survive and others may not.

We only had about 5 very late Winter Aconite plants appear and not one of them managed to produce any flowers this year.

Sadly the Winter Aconites eventually succumbed to the slugs and snails.

    

Quite a few of the tulips never got the chance to show off their beautiful flowers, although we have no idea of the culprit we suspected either rabbits of perhaps the doves.

    

We bought a poorly Geum in the sales last year, divided it into about 5 plants and provided some TLC over the winter. One of the really healthy plants lasted just one night before being completely trashed. Again we suspected rabbits!

This was the first Erythronium (Dog's Tooth) to start producing a flower stalk and I was diligently observing it, hoping to see the first flowers appear.

I was pretty devastated to come across this on one of my afternoon walks, oh it was so close to flowering too.

This was what all the new bluebell plantings should have looked like a couple of weeks ago.

However, after a visit from our local rabbits this is what we've been left with. Thankfully they are still growing and in some areas we can even see a few flower stalks emerging so all is not lost.

Another of our bargain buys were some Anemone which we were able to divide into quite a few healthy plants.

The rabbits or birds or deer seemed to like them too as they were either munched to shreds or dug up.

We bought loads of these little white Grape Hyacinths in a sale and planted them all over the white garden. Having no idea of what animal was involved these were dug up on an almost daily basis. Thankfully now that the flowers are taller they seem to have survived the early attacks.

We couldn't believe that this beautiful Rhododendron was upended just shortly after all the flowers had gone. As it's still alive it's back in the ground and we hope it will quickly become established.

We are always looking for signs of wildlife and often see hoof prints in the mud around the woods.

In an attempt to catch the guilty parties in the act we put up the camera in the wild garden. This shows the damage the deer can do to our poor little sapling.

    

Rather than end on a depressing note of 'look what could've been', I thought I'd show you the beautiful view when we remember to look up to the sky. The trees are starting to flower and the leaves are unfurling, a wonderful sign of spring well under way.