Part of the garden is occuipied by the birds and the bees.

Honeybees are facscinating and valuable creatures; fascinating because of their biology and the way theiy organise their society, and valuable not only becaue of the honey and beeswax they produce, but even more because they pollinate flowers. It's not often realised, but pollination by bees is essential for many of the foodstuffs on which we rely.

Bees have had a hard time recently; attacked by new diseases such as varroa mites, poisoned by commercial insecticides and fed by boring agricultural monocultures. Would you want to eat oilseed rape day after day after day? But thankfully gardeners across the UK are rallying to their defence, and we are no exception.

We now have four beehives in our orchard; all contined bees in the autumn of 2012, but the weather in 2012 was a terrible for bees and we already fear that not all will survive the winter. We hope to have some honey on sale when the garden is open (along with our pure beeswax and balsam furniture polish) - if we've not eaten it all by then. It's really rather good, but not a lot was produced in 2012. We did a pollen analysis on our spring crop, which proved that most of it came from fruit trees. NOT oilseed rape.

Of course, our beehives are the traditional WBC sort. These are not popular with commercial honey producers, but they are much the prettiest type, and they are painted in Farrow & Ball's Lime White. We hope the bees appreciate the decor.

The garden has lots of bee-friendly plants, but with the permission of the Parochial Church Council and the help of many of Whissendine's villagers we have also planted part of the adjacent churchyard with bee-friendly plants, producing lots of nectar and pollen.

They are quite friendly, really; no visitor has been stung yet. But don't disturb the hives, of course...

We also have white doves in the dovecote over the garage, which contribute to the distribution of fertiliser around the garden. But the productive birds are Sarah's latest acquisition of six hens, which live in the orchard. They are all different; different breeds, different appearances, different personalities.

Naturally, the hen-hut had to tie in with the appearance of the house and church, so although it started as a cheap commercial hen-hut, we added a bit of Victorian Gothic. The gate into the hen run is inspired by a stone gateway in the garden at Bureligh House. Coming up next is a pebble mosaic 'drive' to the front door.

We call it 'Peckingham Palace'. We hope the hens appreciate it...