A bit of late winter work on our dry drought gravel garden
Channel: Zwartbles Ireland Suzanna Crampton
Date: 2023-01-29

Over 10 years ago this was a pile of rubbish rubble of brambles nettles & dying scrubby hazels. We hired a digger to level and turn into a parking area. Over the years I’ve slowly been sowing seeds of drought tolerant plants. Today I planted a few lavender to increase biodiversity of this area. Wild birds have mostly eaten seeds of these so I can now cut down the dried over winter stems. I will not compost these dry stems because other insects use them for hibernation. I will place them in areas I want last seeds to sow & insects can come out of hibernation without to much disturbance other than a new location. 





Zwartbles Ireland is a small company run from a farm in County Kilkenny in Ireland. We are a regenerative farm which means restoring soils health and regenerating its natural carbon and nutrient cycle with biodiversity of pasture sward with grasses, legumes, forbs and herbs. This also means we farm with nature. Healthy soils are important for healthy environment. So we encourage all life from the microbial to dung beetles, ants, pollinators to flora biodiversity, birds, hare, hedgehogs, rabbits, fox, badger as well as our livestock. This mean we farm in a style of mob grazing and giving fields long rest times between grazings. We have seen a huge increase and return of wildlife including woodcock and snipe in winter months foraging for dung beetle larvae, red squirrel, wood peckers and pine martens. We also have the rare natter bat and previously thought extinct Tawny Mining bees.
We sell, Zwartbles sheep, Zwartbles blankets and yarn made from the sheep, and calendars featuring Inca the World's Smallest Sheepdog and her coworkers. We also sell alpaca yarn spun for our own alpaca. Our yarns are 100 percent natural, grown by our sheep which grazing our small green Irish fields. This wool is naturally sequestered carbon which you can then knit into warm environmental friendly clothing.