In her garden in Gif-sur-Yvette (Essonne), Patricia Mario adores observing the ballet of crested tits, elegant goldfinches and black-capped warblers.
There are also the pair of turtledoves, finches and hawk which occasionally fly over its “little piece of nature”.
If around twenty species of birds parade regularly around the 160 m2 of its cocoon of greenery, a flight of wings from the Chevreuse valley, it is because Patricia has done everything to make them feel at home there. them.
Like the hedgehog that lives there all year round and the frog that croaks in its waterhole.
Here, pesticides and chemical fertilizers are banned and the hostess makes her own compost from kitchen peelings and green waste.
"If there are chemicals in a garden, there are no more insects, no more caterpillars, no more ladybugs, no more earthworms and therefore… no more piafs", smiles this bank employee who has just published the book "Chronicles of a Sunday Gardener" (Ed. Bod).
Also read In Greater Paris, 126 species of birds have made their nests!
For her seeds, Patricia practices the exchange of seeds with friends who have green thumbs like her.
Carrot and radish seeds are necessarily organic.
And for roses, there is no question of choosing a climbing plant that is not stamped AB.
"I find that they are of better quality than the others which die faster," she explains. Not having been on an infusion of chemicals while growing, they were kind of roughed up and then adapt more easily to the soil. Patricia also carefully chooses her nurserymen, even if it means paying a little more for their products.
"In some large garden centers, the plants can be cheap, but they sometimes come from abroad where they have been raised ... in battery," sighs the Sunday gardener. As if she compared her shrubs and flowers to farm produce. Amidst her blooming tulips and ripening rhododendrons in her garden, Patricia has one conviction: like animals and humans, “plants should be raised with love”.
