Pollinators and bugs can be so valuable in our gardens, Check out the RHS logo and look out for it in the nurseries. Useful lists of plants for bees bugs and moths on their website. I shop for them too when ordering seeds and plants, and am repayed many times over by their company. Get your garden buzzing.
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. By Thomas Huxley http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
Just wanted to add Marshalls are doing a nice Bumble bee margin mix, which is also a green manure, might get some for next year. phacelia, the borage will be a bonus for drinks and salads, and red clover. Also if you have a shady corner spare foxgloves will thrive there, and that keeps the bees busy for a long time and it also looks very attractive while they are flowering.
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. By Thomas Huxley http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
I couldn't agree more NB. My garden is full of bumblebees and hive bees. Some common garden bumble bees have even taken up residence in one of my sheds. For years I've let foxgloves, phacelia tenacetifolia, poached egg plants, borage, red campion and lots of other bee attractants self seed around my garden and moved any that are really in the wrong place to any spare corner I can find. I've also started transplanting spares to the strip of land along the side of the road, so I don't have to throw anything away that is useful. It is lovely to hear people commenting how pretty they are to their children as they walk past.
Having lots of nectar plants and undisturbed corners of the garden helps many beneficial insects to the garden and apart from slugs there is very little need to deal with aphids or anything else.
Other good nectar/pollen plants include mallow, moon pennies, Welsh poppies, nasturtiums, and lots more. If you get things that flower at different times of the year you can provide some nectar most of the year round just in case any insects are out and about on sunny winter days. Try to get single flowers as the insects can't get at the nectar and pollen in double ones.
Couldn't agree more Plum pudding, I have the other plants you mentioned too, being natives they are survivors and self seed in odd corners of the garden, like you I leave them if not in the way, and I don't mind throwing those on the compost even if seeding, where I don't with more troublesome weeds.
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. By Thomas Huxley http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
NB and PP, just mentioning all those flowers conjures up a warm summer's day! We have a large "wild" area in the garden where we grow, I think, all the flowers mentioned above as well as field scabious, hardheads, wild mignonette Joe Pieweed, echinacea, alliums with a few thistles and buttercups thrown in. It's really colourful at the moment and will stay so for the rest of the summer. We let it stand and die off over winter as a hibernacle for insects and their larvae, then cut it back in spring, shaking out any "livestock" and then run the strimmer over the whole area. People passing our garden are always amazed how the whole site grows up again from a very barren looking ground.
The whole of our garden is bordered by a rosa rugosa hedge whose flowers are a real magnet for bees and particularly bumble bees!
Hi Monika, your garden sounds great, I bet the hedge also is a treat for the eyes when in flower.
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. By Thomas Huxley http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
Many thanks, kind sir, the hedge is much, much better! It really does look a treat at the moment and in autumn it carries huge hips which are particularly loved by greenfinches. They rip open the hips to get to the seeds and the thrush/blackbird families eat the flesh which drops down.
Looking at our wild area today, I realised I omitted a number of other plants: single michaelmas daisies, oriental poppies, Welsh poppies, lupins, tansy, red valerian, dame's violet, red campion, figwort (much loved by wasps) and two plants which are not much use to wildlife but look rather pretty: lady's mantle and elder-leaved valerian (Valeriana sambucifolia).
I don't suppose you young'uns remember rosehip syrup just after the war, very high in vit c. I guess they could be used to make some of that with your huge hips. Steady now OH, before you take the Mickey!
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. By Thomas Huxley http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
I always remember going to market with one of the old farmer boys, when i was a boy. There was a big old farmgirl leaning over one of the wooden hurdles looking at some sheep. The old farmer turned to me and said, "they be good child bearing hips, they be", it's always stuck in my mind.
Hi Monika, It is strange that you mention Figwort as much loved by Wasps because all this week I have a Cotoneaster close to the house and the Wasps go for the pollen from very short petaled flowers because have a very short tongue and cannot nectar feed from all but a handful of flowers and the Cotoneaster is smothered with them so I must have a nest very close to the house. Perhaps I'll have a search later on. Beautiful sunshine here one moment then the blackest of clouds covers the area just at present but can see sunshine all around the area but here. JB.
I have tried to make rose***syrup with the aforementioned large fruit on our hedge (you see, I am trying to keep OH from getting excited) but it hasn't been very successful, in fact, it tasted vile. If I remember rightly, I followed a recipe in Richard Mabey's "Food for Free".
On the figwort, Johnboy, it is very noticeable that it seems to be only wasps which feed on the flowers, certainly not bumble bees or honeybees. The red valerian is especially favoured by moths at night including, in previous years, humming bird hawkmoths and lots of silver-y.
Hi Monika, nicotinea is another plant moths love, last year mine attracted two huge moths the biggest wingspan I have ever seen on a moth, sadly I found them after a severe summer storm flattened and deceased. The borage i grew this year is huge,and multiple heads of flowers, are there different varieties of that? it towers over my tomatoes and they are doing very well, I don't remember the last lot being anything like the size of these,
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. By Thomas Huxley http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
I think there is just one variety of borage - we have lots of it on the allotment because every year we leave some of the plants to seed themselves. This year I have also sown a large packet of phacelia in odd corners on the allotment, mainly for the flowers (I usually just grow it for green manure and dig it in before it has flowered). So that should attract the insects! The poached egg flowers, which are just going over now, were certainly covered with bees when they were in flower.
