|
|
Wildlife Gardening
To ensure a good variety of wildlife visitors to your garden, you need
to ensure a good supply of appropriate nectar and food plants, and also
suitable habitats. The most suitable plants are listed below, plus the
visitors they may attract. An abundance of wildflowers will make your
garden the best wildlife restaurant in town! Providing a good native hedge
will also provide suitable habitats for birds and small mammals. Also,
do not tidy up the garden too much in winter - ladybirds and lacewings
(major devourers of garden pests) like to overwinter in hollow flower
stems, twigs, leaves and debris (as do many other insects). Hoverflies
are also good aphid and pest eaters and particularly like yellow and gold-coloured
plants. One important fact to remember in the wildlife garden is to NEVER
use pesticides or herbicides - if you do you will kill off any wildlife
you may have attracted.
Butterflies and Moths
Butterflies and moths are attracted by a wide variety of plants, both
wildflowers, herbs and the more traditional cottage garden plants. It
is also a good idea to have a small nettle patch to attract Small Tortoiseshell
and Peacock butterflies, who like to lay their eggs on the undersides
of the leaves. Cut the nettles back by half in mid-summer to encourage
new shoots for the next brood of caterpillars.
Some Good Butterfly and Moth Plants
Butterfly Plants
Moth Plants
Bees
There are more than 250 species of native bee in Britain, including 19
species of bumblebee - 25% of which are now endangered. In the last four
years or so, one species of bumblebee has been declared extinct and another
has become extinct along the south coast. Today, only 6 out of 16 species
are easily found and even these have declined in numbers. Bumblebees are
beneficial to farmers because of their importance in pollination, although
it is, ironically, the reduction in suitable farmland habitat by these
farmers that has aided the decline of the bumblebee. The Bumblebee Working
Group and English Nature are encouraging farmers to allow or provide White
Deadnettle growth in hedgerows, establish Red Clover in field margins
(very important bumblebee plant), and to leave field margins uncultivated
for a few years in order to provide hibernation sites and forage areas.
Gardeners can do their bit too by providing a small meadow area in their
gardens and leaving an area of rough grass, preferably by a hedge, for
mice or voles to nest in - what's this got to do with bees? Queen bumblebees
like to nest in old mouse and vole nests. You can also buy bee nesting
cylinders to attract Red Mason bees, who are excellent pollinators and
non-aggressive. You can also buy special boxes for bumblebees to nest
in. Interesting fact - a bumblebee can carry up to 60% of its body weight
in pollen.
Some Good Bee Plants
Bee Plants
|
