A Shaftesbury woman is celebrating after being named a Wildlife Garden Champion after spotting the award scheme in the New Blackmore Vale.

Artist and retired events manager, Jeannie Cooksley-Kar, read about Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Wildlife Garden Champions scheme in our January 21 edition and decided to enter her town centre garden.

The scheme promotes gardening for wildlife and biodiversity and awards a plaque and the status of Wildlife Garden Champion to anyone whose plot features at least six of the following things: a commitment to using only peat-free compost, cutting out harmful chemicals and slug pellets, creating a bucket, pond or bog garden if safe and appropriate, building or installing bat boxes, hedgehog houses and bird homes, and ensuring there are nectar-rich plants available for bees and other pollinators.

Mrs Cooksley-Kar says: “I read the article ‘Become a Wildlife Champion for Dorset’ and because I’d been doing a lot to attract wildlife to our garden, I immediately applied.”
She sent photos and the full details of her front and back garden, showing how it has changed from being a standard plot to a nectar-rich wildlife haven.

“When we moved here, my focus was to simply to create a garden for my husband and I, with a relaxing colour scheme of mauves and blues,” she explains. “At that time, I was busy painting, creating work for art exhibitions, so the gardening was fitted around my studio work.”

Jeannie’s garden before the transformation.

However, two years ago, as covid started restricting peoples’ lives, she began spending more time in her garden and noticed a serious decline in the birds, bees and butterflies compared to a few years before.

“When we came here seven years ago, the sound of sparrows singing in the hedges was quite deafening but now the volume has dropped right down and you hardly hear them,” she says. “We noticed a drop off in bees and if we saw a butterfly, it was a special occasion.”

“We read so much about climate change and species becoming extinct and we know it’s out there but when you actually see it in your own garden, in a matter of years, it suddenly hits home,” she says
After reading a Monty Don article about gardening for nature, in which he said everyone could make difference to the decline if gardens were more wildlife friendly, Jeannie’s focus changed.

“I began to notice which flowers the bees favoured and which ones they ignored. Then I became ruthless!” she says. “I took out the flowering shrubs the bees didn’t like and added lots more pollen rich flowers.”

She was guided in her choices by the website rosybee.com which lists the best flowers to encourage pollinators which includes butterflies and other insects, as well as many species of bee.

“When buying bulbs and annuals I bought only those that were bee-friendly,” she says. “However much I liked a plant, if it wasn’t bee-friendly, it didn’t go in my trolley.”
Among the changes Jeannie made were digging up the majority of her rear lawn, to maximise space for pollinators. “We then replaced broken fences, added a triple arch along the rear fence to maximise on climbing plants and focused on changing the soil from a dusty, lifeless state into a rich humus by adding several inches of homemade compost twice a year.”

Her garden is now totally organic, with no chemicals or pesticides allowed, and after doing an online course with the soil expert Charles Dowding, she and her husband practise a “no-dig” method to support organisms within the soil.
“We planted three new trees including two flowering sorbus which have berries in the autumn that the birds love,” says Jeannie. “We’ve fitted bird boxes and bee hotels and focused on shrubs and plants that are nectar rich to provide pollen and nectar from early spring to late autumn.”

She’s ordered new plants, including Viper’s Bugloss which provides nectar throughout the day, and she and her husband have stopped cutting back in the autumn, leaving more leaves and old foliage around for insects to hide in and for birds to forage through.
Now, slowly, pollinators are returning. “We’re even getting some we haven’t seen before – we have leafcutter bees nesting in a planter, hummingbird moths, buff-tailed bumblebees and many other bee species,” she says. “We’ve made a small difference but each year I want to do more.”
Dorset Wildlife Trust praised her garden, describing it as: “An amazing home and refuge for a range of species!”

It says there are 15 million gardens in the UK totalling an acreage greater than all our national nature reserves put together. “Large or small, your garden can provide a vital stepping stone for wildlife and be part of the patchwork of wildlife friendly areas linking towns and the countryside,” it said.

Jeannie agrees. “I know we’re only a tiny garden but if thousands of us did it all over Dorset it would make a huge difference,” she says.

More details from www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/gardenscheme

By Faith Eckersall