My Wild-life Garden Chapter 33: May 22

This blog about one year in the wild-life garden is nearing its end. If there are any new things to tell you in the next year I will add them in. Last summer, for example, was a bad one for butterflies. Let us hope to see more this summer. Our most conspicuous wild-life just now, on days that wet the grass, is garden snails (Helix apsera). They are inclined to eat new plants I buy – delphiniums disappeared overnight – but they are very magnificent. Most of the other plant eaters are kept in check by predators – black beetles, lady-birds, wasps, frogs and so on. But snails are well protected. On the rare occasions I have seen a thrush (for thrushes do know how to crack snail-shells) the blackbirds have swiftly driven it off.

Garden Snail

The Rowan blossom (Sorbus aucuparia) is coming out and there should be fine berries in August. 

Rowan

The managed wild-flower bed is full of different leaf-shapes, so we should start to have flowers for pollinators and for colour soon. The first buttercups are coming into flower, with a promise of plenty more any day. Plenty of Creeping buttercups (Ranunculus repens) and I spend a lot of time weeding them out. But many years ago I bought a packet of Meadow buttercups (Ranunculus acris), and they have repaid the investment a thousand-fold. They move around, and do not always grow where I expected; but they are one of the highlights of early summer.

Meadow Buttercup

In the hedge the plant I grew from a seed picked out of a sunken lane twenty-five years ago has started to grow strongly. It is a Guelder-rose (Viburnum opulus), and will have flowers in due course.

Guelder-rose

I do not want you to think I am more fond of dandelions than of anything else, but I must add a picture of the well-known clock. What a magnificent structure. My case rests.

Dandelion clock

In case this is my last chapter in this blog let me end by summing up my rules for wild-life gardening:

• Never use pesticides.
• Make a pond, however small.
• Many so-called weeds are beautiful wild-flowers, much loved by pollinators.
• If possible have a native tree – even if it is coppiced or reduced to a hedge-size.
• Don't tidy up too much. Dead leaves and stems, seed heads and sticks are all used as habitats.
• Have places that are deliberately suitable for wild creatures to live in – piles of sticks, bird boxes, cracks in stone walls,insect houses and so on.
• Try leaving a patch of grass that you only cut once a year, like hay. I've been rewarded with cowslips, buttercups, orchids, cuckoo-flower – as well as interesting grasses.
• Put up bird-feeders and maintain them.

That'll do for a start.

My Wild-life Garden Chapter 32: May 13th

I know it is only four days since the last chapter, but they have been four days of sun, and some beautiful flowers have appeared. The old rhyme about April flowers bringing forth May flowers seems to have worked here. They will all be fairly prolific as the summer progresses and I suppose they might be called weeds in some contexts.

The Welsh Poppy (Meconopsis cambrica) is the largest of them, a paler yellow than dandelions, and with a form and confidence that would befit a cultivated plant. But these just turn up, particularly where there is a wall or a crack in paving.

Welsh Poppy

The Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) seeds so readily that I pull a lot out. But plenty remains. I love the pink flowers, with darker veins, and the typical Cranesbill seed-pods. I brought my original plant back from the Lake District.

Herb Robert

The meadow area is increasingly being colonised by speedwell. I guess these are Common Field Speedwell (Veronica persica), described in my flower book as “an alien weed of cultivation, first recorded 1825”. Ah well. It looks nice.

Speedwell

Also in the meadow a Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) has come up. It likes damp places and I have seen it flourishing over several square yards in other spots. Here it hangs on. It is also known as Ladies Smock.

Cuckooflower

When the garden was first set up my father-in-law brought a small plant of Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum) from the old ditch that bordered his garden. I stuck it behind the hedge, and it has grown and grown. Look at it now. In late summer every spike will be a wand of scarlet berries.

Lords and Ladies

Followers of this blog will already know about the success of our little bee-house. Well, yesterday I saw not just the mud-plugged holes, but an adult Mason Bee. It is some sort of Osmia, but my insect book says “there are many similar species”.

Mason Bee

This blog is nearing its end; one year was the idea. I would love to think that you were encouraged to try wild-life gardening too. We have been lucky to have so much ground. I think it is fair to call it “medium sized”. Here is a map that I made when the garden was the site of a U3A visit.

The Wild-life Garden

My Wild-life Garden Chapter 31: May 9th

Since the last chapter I have had an intense burst of exam marking, with no time to go into the garden. Now I get back to it and find it is nearly summer, never mind spring. The beech (Fagus sylvatica) in the hedge is coming into leaf at last, and so is the oak (Quercus robur). 

Beech buds opening

New leaves are particularly lovely. We have one or two big clumps of fern where they have just turned up. Now the fronds are uncurling.

Fern uncurling

There is a cowslip (Primula veris) in the meadow, and a carpet of bluebells. 

Cowslip

These are, I must admit, not the native British species but the vigorous Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica). There were already one or two in the garden before we arrived and they have spread and spread. If anyone doubts that dandelions brighten up any patch of grass, look at this.

Dandelions

Today it was hot enough to sit out and read a book. An orange tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) passed through. It must have woken from hibernation. There were plenty of gnats and hoverflies, and various bumblebees. Best of all, a sudden shrieking told me that the swifts (Apus apus) are back. About seven rushed back and forth, shouting shrilly and loud. I would have said this was a little earlier than in most years. It is so good to see them, all the way from Southern Africa.

And today I saw my first two-spot ladybird (Adalia bipunctata) of the year. Quite apart from looking nice, they play a big part in keeping the aphid population under control.

Ladybird

So do the frogs. Breeding is over, but there are plenty of damp, shady places in the garden for them to lurk in. 

Common frog