One of the issues in gardening in the Wye Valley is damage to the garden caused by visiting wildlife. Primarily: deer, badgers, rabbits, and grey squirrels. All of which love to eat the tender new shoots on the plants and shrubs. Even, pigeons can be destructive- they have been caught on camera eating the flower buds on the Magnolia David Clulow.

We have installed fencing around the whole perimeter of the garden to restrict the deer, badgers, and rabbits. Whilst they are all welcome to visit the adjoining field, we would prefer that they do not visit the garden. Nonetheless despite our best efforts we still have visits from badgers and rabbits on a reasonably regular basis. The videos below show examples of badgers in the garden. In one video, badgers are hoovering-up fallen cherries. It seems that badgers love cherries.

Whilst we try to keep some wildlife out of the garden, we do encourage birds and we have a number of nesting boxes and feeding points in the garden. We attract a goodly number of birds including:

• Buzzards
• Pheasants
• Robins*
• Owls **
• Blue Tits*
• Coal Tits*
• Long Tailed Tits
• Nut Hatches*
• Pigeons*
• Green Woodpeckers
• Greater Spotted Woodpecker*
• Jays
• Magpies
• Wrens
• Sparrows
• Goldfinches
• Chaffinch
• Crows
• Sparrows
• Thrushes

* known to have nested in the garden
** heard, but sadly not seen, in the garden