The Nature Garden: gardening, wildlife and nature notes · The Weekending Show

Shrubs & finches

·46 min·3 clips

Greenfinches can show heavy breathing, lethargy, and fluffed-up plumage from trichomoniasis.

It begins with a welcome from Carl Steinsen and the week-ending show team at Lionheart Radio. Tom Pattinson takes on shrubs and makes a straightforward case for them as living cover, winter shelter, bird food, and a source of colour and movement in the garden. The hedge gets a clear defence. He explains that a fence or wall can throw turbulence back into the plants, while a hedge filters the wind and leaves the inside calmer. That thought stays with the show. From there, the conversation moves into birds, and Tom Cadwallander is out along the leafy lanes of Lesbury with a finch story about the comeback of a beautiful finch. Bullfinches come first. He notes the old bounty placed on them because they were blamed for fruit-tree damage, and he points out the northern winter visitors and the bullfinch's white rump. Then the smaller birds arrive. The siskin gets a proper look as the smallest of the UK finches, with the male's black cap, more yellow in the plumage, and the female holding on to some of that colour too. They are not garden birds all the time. The show treats them as migrants from northern forests, moving south in autumn and showing up in northern English gardens in spring, sometimes in large numbers. Weather and feeding conditions shift the pattern. The team links their garden visits to wet conditions that keep Sitka spruce cones from opening, and to other pressures that push the birds out into gardens and hedges. That practical thread keeps running. Steve Lowe turns up on the beach, and the programme keeps its easy mix of place and whatever the coast is offering that day. The episode also makes room for tulip bulbs, desperate times, silver plates, and a bit of heritage-flavoured plotting. Tales from the Hovel returns as another familiar strand, which helps the hour feel like a notebook being passed around rather than a single formal talk. Tom Pattinson closes with garden tips and a reminder about propagation, especially the sensible young shoots that are ready for softwood cuttings. It all lands as a patient, local, seasonal listen for people who like their gardening tied to birds, place names, and the weather outside the window.

As heard by us

Garden talk that widens into birds and seasonal movement.

The episode treats shrubs as something sturdier than border filler. They give shelter, hold food for invertebrates, bring birds into view, and make a garden feel alive rather than decorative.

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Why you'd press play

For when your garden needs better shelter and your bird list needs a lift.

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