Category: Environment (Page 1 of 7)

our built and natural world

There is more than one way to be a patriot. The sign lit up in red on the back of a bike in the Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux exhibition "

Gathering seeds of hope – on a train trip from Scotland to France

October 14, 2025 / fay / 0 Comments

The ugly dark hulk has a daunting bulk. A grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. The old submarine base still occupies the Bacalan district of Bordeaux. So many tons of concrete – 600,000 cubic metres of them – would be difficult to remove.

But walk round it and there’s a surprising softening in an imaginative reclaiming of wasteland. Winding borders of flowers – blue, pink, purple, white – and waving grasses invite butterflies, bees and birds to feed and the wildlife happily obliges. Why not? Plant it right and they will come.

A close up of a leek flower feeding hover flies, butterflies and shiny insects I don't know the names of — Flowering leeks turned out to be a feast for pollinators

Pond Cottage nature notes – making a happy mess.

August 24, 2025 / fay / 0 Comments

Too hot to do the outside work I had planned. I stay indoors with windows open to invite a cooling breeze while I tweak at words for next year’s Pond Cottage entry in Scotland’s Gardens Scheme 2026 Yellow Book. Is it right?

Galanthus “Trumps” at Pond Cottage

February 25, 2025 / fay / 0 Comments

Here we are. At the start of our visiting season I’m not in the best of moods but I stop reading the news to take a walk round the garden and I can’t help smiling when I find the snowdrop given by a dear, gardening friend last year. Perky, eye catching, Galanthus “Trumps” could do with a new name, I think, but what a beauty.

A rusty metal fox treads through the wilder parts of the garden, nettles clamber over a dead hedge

Rewilding: or how to be led by Nature

October 19, 2024 / fay / 0 Comments

Rewilding was not a word in the 1990s when we bought our ten acres of temptingly untended land. Or at least not a word we had heard.

A blackthorn in blossom by the gateway to Pond Cottage, also known as The Pond Garden in Scotland's Gardens Scheme listings to gardens open to the public

A blossoming welcome to The Pond Garden

April 1, 2024 / fay / 0 Comments

A sight we love to see. The wild plum tree blossoming by the gate to Pond Cottage is now 30 years old and the older it gets the more beautiful it grows. It stands as a warm welcome to all visitors and once again we’re looking forward to welcoming Scotland’s Gardens Scheme explorers. We have enticing plans for the new season.

Leylandii logs resting in peace. Photo and log pile by Ray Perman. Two huge trees had to be felled in February. Sad to see them go but can become art and craft at Pond Cottage

Here’s to a new season of unruly gardening

February 28, 2024 / fay / 1 Comment

Here we are at the start of a new season. Though of course the promise of a new season has been poking through the ground since Christmas. Now there are snowdrops everywhere I look but they are being nudged and jostled by bright yellow sploshes of narcissi. Bluebells and wild garlic are racing to catch up. Which season are we in, exactly?

Standing against the storm

January 24, 2024 / fay / 1 Comment

Another storm brewing, I’m teetering on the edge of despair when up comes a cheery message from Scotland’s Gardens Scheme. The new guide book is out and we can find our entry online too. I wrote the Pond Garden entry but now I’m wondering if I got it right…

A nuthatch is gently coaxed to pose for the camera by BTO birdringing volunteers at Pond Cottage. Photo Fay Young

Look this way: the glass is half full

December 18, 2023 / fay / 4 Comments

A proper winter morning for a change. I’m birdwatching by the window with a cooling coffee. There’s a cluster of blue tits on the birch tree feeder, chaffinches catching crumbs on the ground. One robin, two blackbirds, three red squirrels frisky in the snow. Sights for sore eyes and sad hearts this grim December when there’s precious little seasonal comfort and joy. But look, look! There’s a nuthatch again. Is it the one that likes to pose?

Red fruits gleam through the green leaves of the blackthorn tree. Bullaces, or wild plums, are abundant at Pond Cottage this year (2023) and red admiral butterflies are feasting on them mid September: photo Fay Young

Life is just a bowl of bullaces

September 11, 2023 / fay / 0 Comments

We drive slowly up the lane to Pond Cottage and we welcome visitors with signs asking them to do the same. Politely, of course. Slow down please for red squirrels, roe deer and sleepy toads (no kidding). Now I think we need to add a new one. Watch out for red admirals feasting drunkenly on fallen fruit.

Pond Cottage wind turbine at sunset: photo Fay Young

Blowing in the wind

August 26, 2023 / fay / 3 Comments

I have a windmill in my backyard and I am very fond of it. On calm days swallows have been known to sit on it. When the wind blows hard across the fields we know our batteries are brimming with beautiful clean energy. But oddly enough, with all this power surging freely into our house, we are now much more reluctant to waste energy than we used to be in the old days of electricity bills. Owning a windmill can change your outlook on life.

This was the message I wanted to get across when BBC Scotland came to call but it seems our wires were crossed.

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