Red Kite Wildlife Warriors Award #9

Frances and David Newsham

I have always enjoyed having a garden and remember my mother very fondly when I’m gardening. At the moment our back garden is mainly for the benefit of my husband’s Guide dog but I really enjoy birdwatching in the mornings and growing some small patio fruit trees. We have a mixture of shapes and sizes of foliage, different colours and things that we can have in pots so they’re safe from the dogs and it’s amazing what comes when we do that. I feed the birds every morning if I can, we have a pretty tame blackbird visiting and I have to be careful not to hit it when I am scattering mealworms under the shrubs. I am writing this sitting in the garden and I can hear insects buzzing around the various different trees and flowers and I can hear the sparrows and blackbirds, wood pigeons and nearby magpies, it’s an absolute joy. In the front garden we try plant things for perfume and colour and it’s sort of a cottagey garden where things tend to go where they feel like, but that’s fine by me and again we have wildlife out there – we mainly have invertebrates mainly bees and some butterflies buzzing around and that is lovely.

Frances Newsham