The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Wildlife => Topic started by: Fleecewife on September 14, 2013, 01:09:02 am
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Recently I have built a new flower garden - well in fact someone else built it and I have just filled it with plants.
Before I put the plants in I tried to plan a succession of flowers, seeds and berries to appeal to the various wildlife.
So here are some of the flowers I have grown which the bees, butterflies and hoverflies (and wasps) have particularly loved:
Back in spring it was daffodils, primroses and cowslips, crocus, almost anything that came up in fact. The early bees also loved the tiny cotoneaster flowers and honeysuckle. Then it was my alpine flowers such as various saxifrages, and bluebells. Blue garden geraniums were very popular and many are still flowering now.
The bees were absolutely exstatic over the thyme - there has been a selection of thymes out throughout the summer and there still are some. The plants are crawling with bees every time the sun is out. Other herbs they love are oregano (they get so drunk they fall off), lavender, various sages, marjoram (although they prefer the oregano even though the two are very similar), chive flowers and leeks and other alliums in the veg patch which I left to go to seed. Other veg patch plant favourites were brassicas left to go to seed and comfrey.
Lupins and foxgloves were very good and of course the various roses. Sea holly was the favourite of the wasps, which crawled all over them.
At the moment, in September, the bees are drunk again on the sedums. I have several large sedum spectabile and one smaller version with dark leaves and deep magenta flowers - it came out first and is still going - bees, butterflies and hoverflies all absolutely adore that. A few giant sunflowers appeared from dropped bird seed (along with a healthy crop of oats, barley, wheat and what I think is quinoa) and of course bees love sunflowers, so no surprise there.
A surprise has been the antirrhinums which I have not grown before and the big bumble bees can't leave them alone. Yesterday when I was weeding amongst them I had big bees buzzing angrily and impatiently right in my face to get me out of the way of their favourite flowers :) :bee:
They love the cosmos too but some things which I thought they would love such as rudbeckia, achillea, monarda and pyrethrum daisies are virtually ignored. The butterfly bushes have almost no butterflies on, but I suspect that has more to do with the swallows feeding habits than that the insects don't like the flowers.
There have been various other flowers which have been popular but I think these have been the biggest successes, especially the herbs and the snapdragons.
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I have no garden here but reading your post, for a moment I was out in the sun, amongst the colours and scents and buzzings of a beautiful garden... ;D
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dear fleecewife
can we have photos of that lot next year, sounds amazing.
thank you!!!
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Yes, sounds really amazing!! And very inspiring too :)
Photos would be great!
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I haven't got much of a garden but love the sound of yours. My space is a bit of a jungle and with chickens wandering over it they make a mess. I vow to do better next year.
We do (did) have lots of hymalayan balsam growing round the pond and the bees loved that.
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have you tried phalacia? thats popular with bumble bees.
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Phacelia? With blue flowers? yes I have used it as a green manure which I then don't dig in as the bees so love the flowers ;D :bee: :bee: :bee: I should plant some of that in my veg patch again.
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yes, couldnt remember the name :innocent:. borage is nice too. we did a wild flower garden and is was lovely but not much came back the next year.
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When we first planted up our new coppice, I sowed all sorts of flower seeds in there for the wildlife - a lot of it the end of last year's garden packets. Phacelia came up and the odd sunflower, pea etc, but given how many seeds I'd put in it was a total disappointment. I think what probably happened was that the wildlife was so impatient that just about every seed was eaten before it could germinate. Now the trees in there are bigger, we let some ancient toothless sheep in to keep the grass down but not bother the trees.
I still intend to put up some pics of my flower garden (from last week, as it's been battered to smithereens this week) Just need a spare few minutes to do it ::)
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So nice to hear of you planting for the bees and other wildlife. Somthing i have been surprised by is how much the bumble bees love Bergenia cordifolia - it is so early in the season, protects them from a sudden rain shower, and provides food too. They absolutely cover them. Last summer i sat in my garden and like you were surrounded by bumble bees but sadly not many honey bees. Also Catnip (Nepeta faassenii) and Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) they adore those too.
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Last year, there was a series of three programmes on TV introduced by the writer Sarah Raven. It was called 'Bees, Butterflies and Blooms'. They made for fantastic viewing and were full of information and ideas about how to help the UK's struggling insect population.
Did any of you manage to see the programmes? They're well worth watching out for, just incase they are repeated. I have all three of them saved on Sky Planner and I refer to them fairly regularly.
We still have thousands of bees visiting our fuscia trees and the addition of borrage a couple of years ago has also gone down a storm with them too.
This spring, we had a wren that frequently visited our barrel BBQ, so we put fat balls in there for it. In the early summer, we noticed three sunflower seedlings bravely trying to grow in the ashes of the BBQ. My wife rescued them and planted them in a pot. As you can see from the photo, in spite of their late start, they've managed to grow to about 3 foot tall. The bees and butterflies found them just as soon as the first one flowered, the local wildlife absolutely love them. I've always fancied sowing a full field of sunflowers but never quite got around to it. :fc:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb334/kcooper2011/017-1.jpg) (http://s1200.photobucket.com/user/kcooper2011/media/017-1.jpg.html)
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Yes I saw those Sarah Raven programmes Bodger - they were inspiring, weren't they.
I think our bees here are well on the way to recovering their former numbers after two dreadful cold and wet years. The butterflies haven't done as well - we'll see how their numbers are next year after this good one.
I love the sunflower pic :sunshine: I have some self seeded ones too (from birdseed). The best one had grown in about an inch depth of soil, so the first big wind flattened it, but we dug it up and put it in deeper soil with a firm stake and it's flowering its head off now. There are a few more coming too.
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currently like you, our sedums are in full flower and the bees are just mad for them. earlier in the year our beautiful Ceanothus (California Lilac) is equally popular, it's my favourite plant/bush in the whole garden.
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Ah - ceanothus...I would love one but it simply wouldn't survive here. My daughter-in-law has one in her very sheltered east coast of Scotland garden which does quite well growing beside a 20' wall, but here the very low temps and wind blasting are just too much for them.
I love the fact that up and down the country gardeners and smallholders are looking out for, and appreciating, our bees. Not just the honey bees which are of course an alien species to Britain, but also our native bees :bee: :bee: :bee: :bee: :bee: :thumbsup: