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.