gardening for wildlife – Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

Ragged but Lovely: Silene flos-cuculi

April 28, 2024April 27, 2024 Ann Mackay18 Comments

Ragged Robin (Silene flos-cuculi) flowers

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Ragged robin (Silene flos-cuculi, also known as Lychnis flos-cuculi) is a very pretty wildflower that is native to Europe and Asia. It grows in damp or marshy ground and was, in the past, a common sight around the UK. (I remember it growing in soggy ditches alongside country roads when I was much younger.) It has become significantly less common now, even rare, due to land development, especially the drainage of ground for agriculture and the loss of wetlands and wild ponds.

Fortunately, ragged robin is now grown as a garden plant. It’s a perennial which seeds itself around very readily in moist and sunny sites. Gardeners can choose cultivars in deep pink, pale pink or white. The pale flowers in the photograph below were growing in the wet ground alongside a large pond in a garden we visited. They were such a lovely sight that I wished I could grow them in my own much drier garden.

The desire to grow plants that like damp conditions led me to create a little ‘bog garden’ last year. That meant that I was able to plant the dark-flowered ragged robin that you can see in the top photo. (I was afraid that the huge increase in our winter rainfall might have drowned the plants in my bog garden, but everything in it is growing again and the ragged robin seems perfectly happy.)

The availability and growing popularity of wildflowers as garden plants helps not only their survival, but that of many insects too. Ragged robin is an excellent source of nectar for bees and butterflies and apparently attracts dragonflies too. I shall be on the lookout for those!

Late Arrivals

October 1, 2023September 30, 2023 Ann Mackay28 Comments

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This year was a worrying one as far as tiny visitors to the garden went. In spring and early summer it definitely felt as if there were fewer bees and other pollinators around. Butterflies, too, seemed scarcer this year. Things improved in the later part of the summer and there were days when there were a fair number of insects around, but not as good as previous years.

Last winter was a very cold one, with much harder frosts than we usually get. Presumably, this must have made it harder for hibernating insects to make it through to spring. I’ve also read that last year’s drought didn’t help insect numbers. Hopefully the wetter summer this year will have produced an improvement.

It was a relief to see bees and butterflies appearing as the summer progressed. But there were some things that I didn’t see here, such as the Small Tortoiseshell butterfly in the photo below.

Peacock butterflies were a rare sight here too, but Red Admirals appeared in good numbers. (They are the commonest butterflies in my garden, along with the Cabbage Whites.) The largest number I saw was on a particularly sunny day, when about a dozen Red Admirals and a solitary Peacock were feasting on a buddleia. For a few warm days there were enough of them around to swirl past me whenever I walked along the path and brushed against our butterfly bushes.

Small tortoiseshell butterfly — Small Tortoiseshell butterfly photographed in a previous summer

There was an increase in dragonflies visiting – they have obviously become more aware of our pond. It was amusing to watch these fairly heavy creatures try to settle on the nearby stems of evening primrose, which quickly bent and swayed under their weight. To give them better lookout posts, I pushed some big birch twigs into the pots of a couple of the pond plants. I hope they appreciated them!

Although this appeared to be a poor year for insects, there are some signs of hope in the attitudes towards their welfare. I’ve noticed a lot more wild plants and food plants for bees and butterflies in garden centres and nurseries, a response to the growing interest in gardening for wildlife. And, much to my delight, our local council stopped mowing many grassy areas. This means that the green that runs in front of the houses here is being allowed to become wilder. I’m hoping that in a few years we’ll have a decent little wildlife meadow out there!

Hoverfly on potentilla flower — Hoverfly on potentilla

For the Bees

July 10, 2022January 19, 2023 Ann Mackay24 Comments

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Helping bees is the annual focus of ‘Bees’ Needs Week’ again, starting tomorrow. By helping bees to survive and thrive, we’re really helping ourselves. A large part of agriculture relies on bees (and other pollinators) to pollinate the crops that provide our own food.

It seems deeply ironic to me that while agriculture relies on wild pollinators to pollinate an estimated 85-95% of the UK crops that require it, that agriculture is also a main reason for their decline. The destruction of wild habitats by intensive farming and the use of pesticides and weedkillers is making the survival of insects more difficult. But we can all help to fight the decline in wild bees and other insects in our own gardens, on balconies, allotments, and on any patch of spare ground.

Plants with plenty of pollen and nectar are the most obvious thing we can provide. A wide variety of garden plants are attractive to bees, so there’s lots to choose from for the gardener. There is a list of some of the best plants for bumblebees here. And here is an excellent (and longer) list of good pollinator plants from bee expert Dave Goulson. (Scroll down his page for it.)

If you garden, you’ll soon notice which of your plants the bees prefer. I try to be aware of the most popular flowers in my own garden and grow a few more of them if I can squeeze them in. I keep an eye open for the plants that are being visited by bees in other people’s gardens too.

I was very pleased to see the bees on the alstroemeria in the photograph below because it’s one that I’d like to plant here. It looks to me as if the honeybee is impatiently waiting for the bumblebee to get out of that flower! (I wonder why that one – there were plenty of others to choose from.)

Bees on Alstroemeria — Honeybee and Bumblebee on Alstroemeria: ‘Hey wake up in there, it’s my turn!’

Water, obviously, is another essential to life for the bees and you can make their search for it easier and safer by providing some. (It’s easy for bees to drown in deep water.) The recommended method is simply to fill a shallow bowl with pebbles and top it up with water. Then the bees can land on a pebble and stand there safely while drinking. But do remember to change the water occasionally so that you don’t get any mosquitos breeding in there!

Planting for bees brings a lot of satisfaction to my own garden. In late spring the distinct buzzing of bees from our ceanothus bush makes me grin…they sound so busy there! And the catmint attracts not only our cats but lots of bees too. They also love our apple trees, the lavender, thyme, alliums, hardy geraniums, and daisies of all kinds. Best of all here are the different varieties of scabious (top photo), which flower for a long time and always seem to have a bee or other pollinator somewhere. (OK, that is an exaggeration, but they are very popular.)

I hope that this will give you some ideas about a plant or two to add to your own space for the bees. Happy (buzzing) Bees Needs Week!

Common Carder Bee: Bee I.D.

September 26, 2021September 25, 2021 Ann Mackay29 Comments

In the last few years, I’ve become fascinated by the bees and other insects that visit my garden. Sometimes I like to just sit and watch as they go about their business among the flowers. It feels very relaxing and deeply peaceful.

There are several different species of bee that use the garden. Honeybees come here frequently. There’s usually a good number of buff-tailed bumblebees too, and just occasionally, a red-tailed bumblebee. And there’s the bumblebee pictured above – the common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum).

I’d noticed these bees back in spring, visiting the white deadnettle and other early flowers. They moved about too much for me to get a really good look at them, or a clear photograph that showed their markings. Recently, I saw a couple of them enjoying the freshly-opened flowers of a sedum on a sunny afternoon. It made a good opportunity to photograph them.

Having photographs of the bees made it easier to identify them by comparing them to images on websites about bees. Even then, it can be very hard to be sure about identification, because many bees look very similar.

Honeybee on Sedum — For comparison: honeybee on sedum

To make it easier to see the differences between the commonest bees in my garden, I’ve posted a couple of comparison photos. Above is the honeybee. (The western or European honeybee, Apis mellifera.)

You can see that the honeybee’s colouration is quite like that of the common carder bee. But the carder is much hairier and a stronger ginger colour. (The common carder is also a bit bigger than the honeybee.)

If you look at the tails of the two bees, you’ll notice that the tail of the common carder has hairy stripes in black and white. While the honeybee also has a stripey look to its tail, they are quite different. Here the black areas of the tail look smooth and slightly shiny, with just very short and sparse pale-coloured hairs.

Bumblebee on a blue scabious flower. — For comparison (2): Buff-tailed bumblebee (I think!)

The other comparison (above) is the very common buff-tailed bumblebee. (Which can be distinguished from the white-tailed bumblebee by that very narrow orangey stripe at the top of its tail.) It looks quite different from the common carder bee, having a mostly black thorax with an orangey-yellow stripe just below the head, and another on the abdomen, just below the waist. (Mostly hidden here by the wings.)

One of my reasons for wanting to know which bees use my garden is so that I can try to make sure I have a range of flowers to suit them.

The common carder bees have been busy at the caryopteris flowers, even though the shrub has almost finished flowering for the year. Like a lot of other bees, they’re keen on the flowers of sedums at the moment, as well as the last of the catnip flowers. (When there’s not a cat sleeping in it!)

Now I must go and read up on what other flowers they like and what sorts of habitats suit them. I’m hoping for lots more of them next year!

Out for the Big Butterfly Count

August 8, 2021August 7, 2021 Ann Mackay28 Comments

Recently I wrote that there had been few butterflies in the garden this summer. And I had seen no Peacock butterflies. Happily, some have now appeared, as you can see from the top picture (where it shares the buddleia flower with a Red Admiral.)

There aren’t as many butterflies as in last year’s really warm summer, but it’s great to see some. A little bit of sunshine and the scent of the buddleias has brought them into the garden to feast and sun themselves – conveniently for the ‘Big Butterfly Count’, which finishes this weekend.

The appearance of this Small Tortoiseshell butterfly was well-timed for my second go at the butterfly count. It’s the only one I’ve seen so far this year. In fact, I’ve only seen it a few times in the garden. I was delighted that I had my camera ready, and even happier that it didn’t fly away. (Most of the pictures here have been cropped from much bigger images because I couldn’t get close without disturbing the butterfly.)

Below is a butterfly that I’ve not noticed in the garden before. It’s a Gatekeeper and there were two of them, often in the same area. (The dark, band-like markings on the forewings of this one show that it’s a male.) These are common in hedgerows, grassland and around the edges of wooded areas, so they may have come from the woodlands across the road from us. There are plenty of trees and shrubs in the gardens around here and wilder areas with long grass too, so there could soon be more of them.

After I had photographed the Gatekeeper, I thought to myself that it would be good if I could find a Comma to photograph too. They are common butterflies and sure enough, a couple of them turned up. In fact the first one surprised me by landing on the grass at my feet and then deciding to perch on my leg for a while. So I got a rather dodgy photograph of that one and then managed to get a better photograph of the Comma below.

The butterfly that we see most often here is the Red Admiral. There’s usually several of these around on a sunny day and they’re pretty reliable when it comes to being around for the Big Butterfly Count. Afterwards they entertained me by chasing each other around the garden. It was amazing to see them spinning wildly through the air in the last of the evening sunshine.

While I was taking part in the butterfly count, I noticed that many of the butterflies came to feed on the buddleia plant that you see in the photographs here. This was good, because I hadn’t seen many on it before and I wondered if they preferred the paler purple varieties. This one is ‘Royal Red’. Here it looks more of a reddish purple but the colour changes a lot with the light and sometimes it’s a really lovely deep colour with more red in it. I’m glad to see that it does attract butterflies. I have several cuttings of it that are growing well, so I’ll plant them out in a sunny and sheltered area. Maybe they’ll bring in more butterflies for next year’s count.

There was a surprise while doing my first butterfly count for this year – a big hedgehog snoozing in the undergrowth! I haven’t seen one in this garden for a few years, so it’s good to know that they are around. It was worth having to restart that count just for the glimpse of him or her. (And don’t tell my cats, but I left out a bit of their food, which it ate pretty quickly.)