Gardening for Wildlife

- thoughts for 2021

Gardening is a pastime which helps keep us fit and healthy. Wildlife gardening additionally lets us enjoy and connect to nature, bringing with it a host of benefits including a sense of wellbeing and improved mental resilience; a perfect antidote to the events of the last year. You can encourage wildlife without compromising the way your garden looks; gardening for wildlife needn’t mean leaving an untidy mess. Small changes to your garden can bring major benefits for the creatures that call it home and bring in more wildlife for you to watch. We have been gardening for wildlife since we moved here and hope we’ve achieved something that looks good and provides colour throughout most of the year whilst providing cover, protection, habitat and food sources for wildlife. Come and see for yourself on Sunday 27th June when we open for Bookham Open Gardens. As spring approaches, it’s time to think about new projects and how best to manage the garden this year. Some suggestions are • Plant some pollinator friendly plants - look for the

Plants for Pollinators or Perfect for Pollinators logo - and consider planting some berry shrubs as a winter food source. • Put in some ground cover plants and allow some grass to grow long for shelter and insects to lay eggs.

You could plug plant the grass with wildflowers too.

For wildflower seeds, you need to plant on bare soil, so they’re best going in a bed. • Make a pile of dead wood, logs, stones for shelter. • Provide water for wildlife to drink and bathe - in a bird bath or in a pond. You can even do a pond in a bucket or barrel. Make sure there is an escape route for creatures which fall in! • Put up bird and bat boxes and build a bug hotel. • Build a hedgehog home and provide gaps at the base of fences for them to travel between gardens. • Put in a water butt to conserve water, buy peat-free compost or better still make your own. • Try and avoid weed killers, insecticides and nasty slug pellets • Consider letting your front verge grow and see if wildflowers come up. Put up a Blue Heart! Then just sit back and enjoy it! In 2020 we loved sitting and watching the visiting wildlife, dragonflies and newts hatching from our pond and the insects busily pollinating our plants. For more information, contact Diane Poole on

bookhambluehearts@gmail.com

Lucy of Buy to Let Hunter interviews a local entrepreneur

Buy To Let Hunter is a fresh approach to property purchase – we recently sat down with one of our early investors to catch up with him:

Raffi is a local business owner doing a great thing for the world - he arrived in Richmond with enough money for just 8 months. He followed a hunch and set up Bantam Materials - providing Prevented Ocean Plastic, recycling and collecting from at-risk coastal communities and creating a research centre on the Richmond Green – we think he is marvellous, and we are not the only ones! He just won: “Sustainable Initiative of The Year”. Whoop! Raffi realised that he wanted to invest in property but preferred a professionally managed structure run by trustworthy people to allow him the freedom to focus on the craziness in his own world. Raffi approached us and asked us to help. Through Buy To Let Hunter, Raffi has purchased a pure investment property and a holiday home which he uses in conjunction with renting it out to paying guests. Raffi says: “For me there wasn’t a second choice when I met the Buy To Let Hunter team. It was about working with someone trustworthy and when speaking to one of the directors, a local guy, it was clear he was someone I could trust. I didn’t need to look any further. And my expectation has been more than met.” Obviously investing in anything is risky, but understanding that, Raffi feels he has enhanced his lifestyle greatly. He has a free holiday home that pays for itself, in fact it pays Raffi just to own it!!

Raffi says: “My kids have a pool, access to nature, the cottage overlooks a lake… And it’s just an hour and a half from London.”

“It’s absolutely no hassle.... The team at BTLH do absolutely everything, checking in guests, housekeeping, making sure everything is perfect for my family and visitors. I just turn up. Oh, and cash the cheques! In fact it makes me a Gross yield 12% - £52,000 annually” “And I had no doubt I could trust Adrian after I met him. The single biggest thing is that my interests were ahead of their company profit. So, I feel I can really trust the advice.” We do love a happy punter! If you think we might be able to enhance your life in the way we have for Raffi, please give us a call 020 7550 9396 or hello@buytolethunter.com. For more information check out www.buytolethunter.com Quadrant Road, Richmond, London, TW9 1DH