Tag Archives: wildlife gardening

Bee Banks and Bug Hotels

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This is the new Welcome sign at Ferry Meadows. It’s a massive bug hotel, as you can probably see from a closer examination of the individual cells in the picture. It seems that this is a new fashion I had been totally unaware off, as can be seen from this site, for example. The one at Ferry Meadows can be seen better in this picture and has been built by Green Earth Habitats.

I’m not sure if they are better than having plain bug hotels around the place. If they were actually properly publicised I could see he point, but posting them on Facebook and Instagram isn’t doing it, whatever people may think. Look at it this way. I live on the doorstep and I didn’t know about it because, like many other people I don’t use social media.

The other thing they are doing is the Bee Bank. This is as much as i could find about it, so i had to dig a bit further.

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And, as I suspected, it’s a bank made up to provide habitat for bees and, butterflies, according to Ferry Meadows, though butterflies don’t need banks, they need appropriate food plants. I suppose a bank gives a patch of warm earth for them to draw warmth from, but that’s about as far as it goes. Everyone else seems to call them Bee Banks. I will remember it when we redesign the garden, but I’m not sure it’s going to be easy to fit one in.

Small Tortoiseshells on red buddleia

Butterflies and Nettle Soup

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I’ve just been having a look through some old photos. It’s amazing how many I have kept over the years, though they are a  random, unsorted and generally useless bunch of images.

The one I used as a “featured image” is one of my favourites. When you consider how early a crocus blooms, it’s unusual to photograph a butterfly on one.  Strangely, it was very active, despite the time of year, and flew off after I’d managed to get just two shots. That is typical butterfly behaviour.

MY relationship with butterflies started when I was very young – it was the summer before my sister was born, which would make me just over two years old. In those days they were as big as my hand. Like so many other things, they became less impressive as I grew older. About eight years later, I became interested in them again, learnt more about them and pursued them with a net. It was not my finest hour but times were different then. After that, I didn’t pay them more than a passing interest until we started the Quercus project on the farm. Butterflies are easier to observe and photograph when you have a group of people behind you.

Nettle soup, as you may guess from the title, is also one of my favourites. I haven’t made it for a few years but, having cleared the back fence, I now have  a thriving nettle bed. This promises a good harvest, and a good food source for butterflies. I will have to manage it properly, as we don’t want masses of nettles when we com to sell the house, but I’m looking forward to several years of butterflies and nettle soup. Red admiral, peacock, small tortoiseshell and comma caterpillars all eat nettles. I’ve never seen a comma in the garden, but I have seen the other three so we could be on for a good year.

Nettle Soup

Nettle Soup is also, sometimes misleadingly, the name given to the solution that develops if you steep nettles in water .It’s also known as nettle tea. You can also put nettles in a cup, pour boiling water on them and drink them like a tea.

There are many recipes on the internet for nettle soup (some more complicated than others) and nearly as many for the fertiliser.  have a poke round and see what you can find. Fertiliser is easy – let nettles rot in water. Compost the nettles and dilute the resulting liquid a the rate of about 10:1 to water on a s a plant food. Warning: it may be a bit smelly. I’ve never been bothered by it but some people do bang on about it in their recipes.

My personal favourite recipe for the green (edible) soup is very simple – just onions, nettles, stock and a blender, as I recall – no potatoes, no rice. And definitely no carrot, celery or cream. One recipe even tells you that you can often find bunches of nettles on Farmers’ Markets in spring.

Buy nettles? Words fail me…

 

Helping Insects

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You don’t really need to do much for insects, just leave some of the garden slightly untidy. I can manage that. Unfortunately, when you look round the gardens that surround us, I’m one of a dying breed. The neighbours on one side have gradually turned their garden into a hard-landscaped hell over the last thirty years, whilst the previous set on the other side have erased every feature of interest. They also tried to tell me how to manage my garden. I’m hoping the new neighbours on that side might be an improvement. They have given me cake twice since moving in, so I do have reason for optimism.

Wildlife area – Attenborough
Bug Hotel – Attenborough
Bug Hotel – Attenborough
Bug Hotels – Attenborough

The featured image is a bug box in the Sainsbury’s car park in Whitby. They did make a big thing about them at one time, with in-store posters, but this is the only one I actually remember seeing. It’s quite an elegant thing, and would grace any garden.

The next group of bug hotels are behind the centre at Attenborough. I just checked the link and see I’ve already shown them. Just goes to show how bad my memory is. The pictures below show some arrangements from Carsington Water  – which can be as simple as leaving a pile of logs.

The one attached to the tree is in the garden of the Bishop’s Palace at Southwell Minster.

Insect habitat – Carsington Water
Bug Hotel – Southwell
Bug Hotel – Carsington Water

At the moment I’m thinking about the best way to get some bug cover in the garden, as we’ve had to clear a lot of clutter to get the garden in shape. Somewhere I have more pictures, but how many do you need to see?