I’VE been busy painting for a new exhibition to celebrate my 20th year at Fotherdale Farm in Thixendale. My new collection will tell the story of how I transformed this once-barren plot specifically to encourage wildlife.

It will include brand new paintings as well as a retrospective of my favourite artwork, spanning back to 1998 when my wife and I first moved here.

At that time, the garden just been levelled with a JCB digger and there were just two plants remaining - a red hot poker and a fuchsia.

This was actually ideal because we had a blank canvas to work on. The first thing we did was dig a vegetable patch and plant a hawthorn hedge along the boundary.

Neither of us are particular fans of expanses of lawn so we divided the space into flower borders and winding paths.

It wasn’t easy. There was just four inches of topsoil before you hit solid chalk. My brother was farming nearby and we asked him for some manure to spruce up the soil. He arrived with a big grin on his face and 12 tonnes of manure which he dumped at the bottom of the drive.

We barrowed it, bit by bit, onto the mapped out borders. The following year another 12 tonnes was needed for another part of the garden.

The wildlife was very disappointing, especially as I had just moved from nearby Great Givendale where it was abundant.

Apart from one pair of sparrows nesting in the roof space, there were no other nesting birds at Fotherdale.

We set about digging a pond with running water. There is virtually no permanent water nearby. This was the most important thing we did. In the first few days of filling it the birds began to flock in from all angles to bathe and drink this new water supply. One dry autumn we even had a “super charm” of goldfinches. The site is exposed and the plants get battered by the wind, but we’ve noticed that the plants here grow to a “Fotherdale” size and they all shelter and support each other.

I stuck to native species that offer nectar for the insects in the summer and berries in the winter so that I can keep up food supplies to birds all year round.

We’ve had some plant losses and some successes, but generally the plants love the fast draining land and all-day sunshine that the garden offers.

Each year we’ve improved on the project. We have planted 1,200 trees to create a woodland on the slope at the back of the house which has brought in more wildlife and also helps to protect us from some of the worst of the winds. I call this my “Fotherdale Forest”.

And more recently I planted a wildflower meadow at the front which has really teamed with insect life and, of course, birdlife, since it matured.

In fact now the garden is host to more than 60 species of birds and the tree sparrow population has grown from that first pair to 35 breeding pairs – a heartening statistic because tree sparrows are a species that have been red-listed by the RSPB.

Owls and kestrels nest here, as do stoats and weasels and deer, hares and foxes often pass through the woodland. These creatures are a constant source of inspiration for my paintings.

My gallery has also transformed in the 20 years since we moved here. Originally located in a hay loft where it had to be accessed through the house, it is now an elegant, beamed space for my art work.

Most of the paintings on show are portraits of the animals and birds that live here. My new exhibition will feature story boards alongside the paintings that tell the story of how I watched these creature in my garden.

I use surveillance cameras to keep track of the animals in the garden and have built a number of different habitats there to attract different species, including weasels, stoats and owls.

The new exhibition includes videos and screens showing live images from these surveillance cameras.

  • Robert’s exhibition opens at his gallery in Thixendale on November 10 and runs until December 2. See robertefuller.com.