Virginia, Durban North
Through trial & error and some advice along the way, we now have a garden that is 99% indigenous, and gives us enormous pleasure watching the antics of all the wildlife visitors.
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History and Development
In 2001 we decided to plant an indigenous garden after we bought a house that came with almost a clean slate. A great idea, but the reality was that we had zero knowledge! We signed up for a course on Indigenous Gardening through the Wildlife Society and bought our first gardening reference book “Bring Nature back to your Garden” by Charles & Julia Botha.
Through trial & error and some advice along the way, we now have a garden that is 99% indigenous, and gives us enormous pleasure watching the antics of all the wildlife visitors. The speed at which life arrived was astounding, initially attracting all sorts of insects, butterflies, birds etc within the first year of planting. Most of the early bird visitors were seed eaters but 22 years later it is much more of a forest and attracts more of the shy, beautiful forest species.
Our garden bird count to date is 104 with the most unusual being a Secretarybird that got blown off course by a tropical storm (a story for another time).
I have included two clips of bird sounds. The one is some very distressed White-eared Barbets and when I searched for the reason I found a Little Sparrowhawk hunting in the garden