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SALES

Mail order service into its second year

Thanks to all of you who used our first mail order catalogue last year - I hope you may do the same with our new edition, enclosed. We have maintained the best sellers, improved on some and added new lines - items like natural-material roosting pockets (which our shop customers couldn't get enough of last winter!) and an expansion of our very popular range of unbleached cotton textiles. If you order nothing else, get a copy of our special edition 2001 calendar celebrating the work of Brian and Sheila Bottomley.

Phone (01736) 331824 for further copies of the catalogue for your friends and relatives, or alternatively drop in on our website: www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/cornwall

We really do need your support at the moment. Having been charged full business rates we were forced to relocate to less prominent (and therefore less expensive) premises. Mail order can provide the route to more profits for the Trust where location is less important.

Royal Cornwall - what a show!

The decision to expand and to create the wildlife garden really attracted attention. Thanks to everyone involved in setting up and looking after the site.

Creating the garden, though a challenge, was an enjoyable one. Gavin and Jenny from reserves joined me in manoeuvring three tonnes of topsoil and wood chip on Monday. While Jenny and I were busy with shovel and spade, Gavin did some spectacular things with lengths of timber, wire and an old pallet - the framework of the rockery and pond, which was level at the first attempt!

On Tuesday, Lorna Crewes (once Sales Officer, now Bosilliac wildflower nurserywoman) produced an impressive array of wild flowers. She helped to plan their arrangement and then to plant all 250 of them in different habitat areas: pond and marsh, perennial and annual meadow, coastal/chalky meadow, herb and butterfly area, and woodland.

On Wednesday we added the finishing touches. Green woodworker Sara Dowler brought a fabulous hazel coppice bench and wove a beautiful living willow arch, rooted into coppiced hazel and willow planters. We added herbs to these for a relaxing scented garden area. Sara also created different examples of woven fencing panels, which framed the woodland area. The reserves team brought logs for the log pile and hedgehog nest site, installed more rocks and filled the compost heaps. Leaves and coir were sprinkled to hide evidence of wood chip, while John Macadam painstakingly attached sticks to the interpretation stickers and text, placing them and our Fox Club quiz signposts in the right places throughout the garden.

Added attractions like live bats and amphibians (thanks to Rowena Varley, Ginni Little and Mark Nicholson), Simpson Junior the stuffed otter, displays for RIGS, the Cornwall Biodiversity Initiative and Seaquest, and our "getting involved" section kept both member and non-member visitors interested.

We hope that the stand increased awareness of the hows and whys of wildlife gardening and we are sure that most were left with the impression that a wildlife garden is not just for wildlife but is an attractive haven for we humans too!

Sally Pyner

Cornwall Wildlife Trust