Langdon: A garden for people and planet

An exciting moment of bee geekery this morning with this sighting - as I’d just learnt about this very species on the @field_studies_council course ‘Discovering Bees’ that I’m doing at the moment. And the truth is…it’s not a bee! It’s a fly - a dark edged bee fly in fact. The name says a lot. The dark edges you can see on her wings. And she’s a ‘bee fly’ because she looks like one, with her furry body. This is a common evolutionary trait - where flies have developed bee or wasp like stripes or furry bodies to disguise themselves and deter predators who might be afraid of a stinging.There are a couple of things that help to know it’s a fly though. One is that it only has one pair of wings (bees and wasps have two pairs). Also you can often check out their eyes (not in this video though) which are much bigger in flies - usually taking up almost the whole head.Did you notice that proboscis? Looks like some kind of pointy weapon to me, but it’s actually a straw for sucking nectar. It’s always stuck out like that - she can’t retract like bees can. Funky looking thing isn’t it?Final creepy fact is that these bee flies are parasites. They hunt bee nests and throw their eggs into them. When their larvae emerge they gobble up the bee larvae for breakfast. Not so cute now. 😳#bees #beesofinstagram #beefly #gardenwildlife

I have a new neighbour! I put this robin nester right opposite my potting shed door last year, but was worried it might be too close to us humans even for a friendly robin. But hurray! A new resident has been setting up her nest in the last couple of days. I feel very honoured. Although there’s no greenery around the nester, as would be ideal, it’s a very sheltered, shady spot with a big tree just opposite for stopping off at before flying in. This lovely nest is designed specifically to suit the nesting habits of robins. The entrance is wide and open, but there is a hidden area for nesting to the side. It is made by @simonkingwildlife and this one I bought from Faversham’s eco garden centre @ediblecultureuk #robin #robinsnest #britishbirds #wildlifegardening #birdboxes

🥾🥾We are emerging from our wintery slumber for a Winter Walk this Saturday morning. Gardener Gail and I will be hosting a walk around the garden to discover the cool, soft emergence of the plants and animals as winter waves to an approaching spring. Fragrant viburnum flowers, perky snowdrops, catkins galore, and the mallards returning to the pond are just some of the sights to see. ☕️🍰Midway through the walk we’ll stop at the granary for a cosy warm up with homemade cakes and hot drinks, plus lots of time to ask questions and share thoughts about the season and your gardens. 🦆🦆This Saturday - 3rd Feb - 10am-12.00pm Tickets £15 pp. Available on our website - https://www.langdongarden.com/event-details/winter-walk See you there!!

This spiky ball is Amanda! She was released into the wild at Langdon in May after a winter of being cared for by Hogwinkles rescue in Faversham. The previous autumn she had been rescued as a vulnerable new born, wondering dangerously close to the busy A2 road. Autumn is a dangerous time for hedgehogs for various reasons and it is a busy time for those who rescue and rehabilitate them. We are lucky to have not one but two local hedgehog rescue organisations with us on Saturday for our open garden. Hogwinkles from Faversham, and Thorne Hedgehog Rescue from Ashford, will be here to talk about hedgehogs, why they are vulnerable to extinction in the UK, and what we as gardeners can do to help them. Come and join us on Saturday between 1pm and 5pm. More details on our website - www-langdongarden.com. No need to book - just turn up. Entry charge £5 donation for Kent Wildlife Trust

Today was a lesson in relaxing and enjoying the weather whatever it brings. Thanks to our participants on our guided summer walk who had come prepared and were all so cheerful as we explored the garden in the rain. And it made the indoors and cakes made from home-grown figs and courgettes even more inviting and delicious! Some of our participants have been joining us throughout the year, visiting each season, and commented today on how the act of visiting the garden each season to observe and reflect on the changes, has also become an opportunity to consider personal growth and changes since last visiting. It’s lovely to say goodbye knowing they’ll be back in the autumn. The autumn walk is on 4th Nov if you’d like to come along on head to our website for bookings and info.

What a fantastic workshop we had on Friday evening with Scott from @wildclassroomuk! Five families explored the garden, fed the fish, chopped veg, made a fire and cooked up delicious pizzas. We can’t wait to have Scott back here later in the year during the half term holiday, but before then, make sure you follow @wildclassroomuk for more summer workshops.

You can now book your place on our Wild Classroom family workshop for the summer holidays! FRIDAY 28 JULY - 4-6pm Join us for a glorious summer evening where you can relax and enjoy the garden, while your young people get hands on, cooking delicious spelt sourdough pizzas over the fire. Suitable for children of all ages - must be accompanied by an adult. £15 per child (includes own pizza and drink) - accompanying adults come free! Hot and cold drinks and snacks will be available to buy from the Granary. Book your tickets now - don’t delay!! Wild Classroom tickets always sell fast 🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏿Link in bio 👆🏼#faversham #whatsoninkent #familyworkshop #kentevents #wildclassroom #outdoorcooking #cookingwithkids #cookingonfire #thingstodowithkids @wildclassroomuk

Celebrate the solstice here this evening. Contact @roseclarity to book your place. #faversham #summersoltice

I am enthralled with the activity of these female Mason bees (Red Mason bees I think) in the bug house I put up just a few weeks ago. If you don’t have one in your garden I urge you to put one up as they are so fascinating to watch, and unlike birds you can get really close and they don’t fly away! Ours is in the vegetable garden so while they’re busy collecting nectar and pollen, they’re also pollinating our food - win win 😁Now is the busy time when the females spend all their time building cells, finding food to put in each one, and then laying an egg in it before closing it with mud and starting the next cell - there are several cells along each tube. The ones you can see that are blocked have all been built in the last three weeks or so. After these few busy months in spring, the female bees die (the males die much earlier, just stick around long enough to mate). Through the summer eggs become larvae and then pupae inside their cells, in the cold months they are dormant, and then finally in the spring they emerge as bees for the whole cycle to begin again! There’s various advice online about making sure you get the right diameter of holes on your bug house. They also need to be at a height of about 1.5 m and in a sunny sheltered position. These bees seem to love our sunny wall and I am so pleased to have them there! #bees #masonbees #solitarybees #beesofinstagram #bughotel #bughouse #wildlifegarden #gardeninspiration #pollinatorgarden #wildaboutgardens

You don’t have to be an ‘artist’ or ‘good at art’ to enjoy our Gardening Sketching and Painting day today. Join us if you can between 10.30 and 4.30 - more info on the website - https://www.langdongarden.com/workshops

Sound on for giggles!! 😆 This is my daughter enjoying having her feet kissed by the fish in the pond, just one of the joys of having them as part of the garden community. Another is just the way they mesmerise you while you watch them - bring you into the moment, and take you out of your busy thinking mind to a calmer place. Not only this, they attract magnificent visitors such as herons, cormorants and kingfishers to the garden. However, they can have drawbacks too, especially if you’re trying to encourage as much wildlife as possible, as we are. Many of the species we would like to attract such as newts or frogs, dragonflies and even plants, can be threatened by the fish’s voracious appetite. I have just published a blog about what we’ve learned about our fishy residents in the few years we’ve been here - the good, the bad and the surprising. The blog’s on the website now at https://www.langdongarden.com/post/what-are-the-benefits-of-having-fish-in-our-pond-and-how-about-the-drawbacks 🐟 🐟🐟 #wildlifepond #fishpond #gardenpond #gardeningforwildlife #wildlifegardening #wildlifeblogger #gardeningblog #pond

Oh how I love mulch! Especially when it’s delivered free by a friendly neighbour (thanks James Strickells!) and smells SO good. This will keep the ground warm, helping to protect the plants from the threatened polar vortex 🥶, and stop unwanted weeds sneaking in. And it looks beautiful too. All good things today on this sunny Imbolc day. #mulch #soilhealth

The answer is B - Worms! Our back meadow - and more recently the walled vegetable garden - is peppered with mole hills. No sooner do we rake them over and a new one appears - they even tunnel up through the raised beds! Bothersome 😠 But I don’t hate my tunnelling neighbours - I love them though they’re pesky. I got to wondering about their lives below ground this week and did a bit of research. One good bit of news is that, though worms are their favourite food, they also eat other creatures that are unlucky enough to wonder into their tunnels - including the larvae of garden pests such as cockchafers, carrot fly and leatherjackets. So moles are gardener’s friends some of the time - thanks moles 👍 Their tunnels also provide drainage underground I read. Our garden is so boggy now, but I guess it would be way worse without the tunnels to help. To my surprise, I also discovered that all the hills at Langdon are probably the work of only 2 or 3 moles! They live alone (except when in the nest as new borns), and fiercely guard their tunnel territory from other moles. Their territories are big enough that 2-3 moles is usually the max in an acre (ours have spread across roughly this). Amazing! They live 4-6 years so this one whose bum I caught on camera in 2021 is probably still busy eating worms and repairing tunnels down there. Final amazing fact is that female moles are intersex. What that means in the case of moles is that they have loads of male hormones so they are as muscular and aggressive as males - necessary for all the digging and protecting of territory. They also have some quite unusual sexual organs but I’ll leave you to google that! #planetfriendlygardening #moles #britishwildlife #gardening #gardeningislife #gardeningforwildlife #gardenpests #moles

We’ve got stacks of fantastic events coming up in 2023 - gardening skills, creative, reflective workshops, mindfulness and family cooking.🎁 Tickets and gift vouchers make great gifts and all these are on sale now on our website - langdongarden.com 💌🏃🏽‍♀️Free hand delivery in Faversham and surrounding area until 23rd Dec @millymolly_herbalist @gail.s.rowlands @alisongbd @gardeningbydesign @wildclassroomuk @ferncounselling @thewildspacekent #faversham #favershamkent #eventsinkent #infaversham #gardeningisfun #gardeningworkshops #eventsinkent

One little tree….two wonderful events… The second event is with Simone from @kentmindfulnesscentre, who gifted us this apple tree a year ago. It’s called ‘Beside the Fire: Mindful Journalling Under the Stars’ and is from 6-9pm this Friday 2nd Dec. We’ll wrap up warm, enjoy the warmth of the fire, eating delicious dhal from @wastedkitchen and listening to the garden sounds of the night. There will be a little poetry too and some folk song from the talented @beathag_ecobard. Standard tickets are £40 (£47 with dhal). If you would like to come but are unable to pay the standard price at the moment, there is also a reduced rate on offer. See our website for all the details. https://www.langdongarden.com/workshops Hope you can make it to one of our wonderful Friday events! 🌳✨📖✍🏼🥣🌱

One little apple tree joins together two events on Friday… 🌳 Number 1 - For #nationaltreeweek we are welcoming you to a walk around the garden to look at the trees with me and local tree warden, Vic Dickenson. 11am - 12.30pm It’s free to attend but please sign up on our website (https://www.langdongarden.com/workshops). ☕️🍰 Hot drinks and cake will be available - donations to @favershamfoodbank if you can. 👀Don’t miss the next video for news of the second event and the link to this young apple tree 🍏 #faversham #favershamkent #infaversham #eventsinkent #visitfaversham #favershamtrees

Green Friday is a campaign against the wasteful, compulsive over-consumption of stuff we don’t need that Black Friday represents. It’s “all about giving, and investing in things that really matter and make life fulfilling, worthwhile and even beautiful.” Our workshops and walks make beautiful Christmas presents - waste-free, carbon-free, local, educational, mindful, creative, compassionate and meaningful. For Green Friday we are offering 20% off our walks and workshops from now and throughout the weekend. Just use the code GREENFRIDAY at the checkout page. #greenfriday #favershamkent #infaversham #faversham #kentworkshops #gardenworkshop #lovealltheseasons

If you see a hedgehog wondering about in the daytime it probably needs your help. Find your local hedgehog group and give them a call asap. In the meantime keep the hedgehog safe in a box (High sides - they can escape!). Don’t feed with anything (definitely not anything plant based) except perhaps a little dog or cat food. Giving them a little water to drink is a good idea. In Faversham look up the wonderful Hogwinkles Faversham or Wrens Hill Hedgehog Rescue 🤎🦔🤎🦔🤎 #hedgehog #hedgehogrescue #animalextinction #gardeninglife #gardeningforwildlife #wildlifegardening #faversham #favershamkent

🪵 It’s #nationaltreeweek next week and so I decided to do a tree-related blog. A bit odd to focus on dead trees you might think, but actually I think the old stumps and and decaying logs are just as important to the garden eco-system as the living trees and plants. They are far from dead - dead wood is full of life! Fungi, insects, birds, small mammals - it serves as food and habitat for many. And gnarly aged bark, dressed in lichens, fungi and ivy is beautiful for our eyes too. The tree continues to serve us all, even as it becomes less tree, more soil. In my new blog post I’ve written about some of the benefits to wildlife of having dead wood in your garden, and also given some examples of dead wood here at Langdon. Plus a few thoughts on the dreaded honey fungus!!! 😱 FANCY A READ? Here’s the link… https://www.langdongarden.com/post/dead-wood-dead-good-for-your-garden 🌲 Free Tree Tour on Fri 2 Dec! See link in bio 🌳 #deadwood #wildlifefriendlygarden #gardeningforwildlife #treelovers #honeyfungus