BSBI Garden Wildflower Hunt - 3rd Survey

Another 3 weeks has passed since I did the second BSBI Garden Wildflower Hunt. Although the weather continues dry and warm, the pace seems to have slowed down a little.

Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea)

We are getting to some of the bigger, showier flowers such as Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea). I think that these were introduced.

Red Campion (Silene dioica)

When my parents first arrived, there was a Red Campion (Silene dioica) already growing in the garden. Various creatures ate it and the Fallow Deer that used to visit the garden were the final straw and it expired. On an impulse, I planted replacement ones, along with some Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) last year.

Procumbent Yellow Sorrel (Oxalis corniculata)

There are still plenty of weeds popping up. The Procumbent Yellow Sorrel (Oxalis corniculata). This was actually introduced by gardeners by 1656 and has been spreading ever since.

Hairy Sedge (Carex hirta)

More grasses and sedges are beginning to show and become identifiable.  There were plenty that I recognised from previous years such as Barren Brome (Anisantha sterilis), Grey Sedge (Carex divlsa ss divulsa) etc.  However, there was one that was new to me, Hairy Sedge (Carex hirta).

Combining my three counts, I have recorded 77 wildflowers of which:

• 57 probably occurred naturally in our garden
• 20 were sown or planted.

#30DaysWild Getting Grumpy about the Rain

This has been the most unrelentingly awful June I can remember. The sulky grey skies and incessant rain seem to mirror the attitude of a country in the grip of an incredibly ugly European referendum.  In the Wildlife Trusts' #30DaysWild Challenge people are making the best of it with a lot of jolly posts about children splashing around in puddles and talk of dancing in the rain. I feel like I'm the only one that's being grumpy about the weather. It's not just because it's spoiling my photos and fun. Homes are being flooded, crops damaged and wildlife harmed.  Early in the month our blue tits fledged just two youngsters - presumably down to the difficulty in collecting caterpillars.  Most days there has been relatively little visible insect life because of the difficulty that bees, butterflies etc. have foraging in this ghastly weather. 

Day 20 - Undercover Robin

First thing in the morning I found the deer poo that told me we have had an overnight visitor. The day's rain was unrelenting.

Look carefully and you can see a robin sheltering from the rain.

A robin hid from the rain under the bird-table roof. You can only just see it, but it totally nailed my attitude to all the rain and lousy light we've had this June. 

Day 21 - Glimpses of blue

Another day of dull wet weather

Bumblebee taking advantage of a short respite in the grim weather.

Busy bees took advantage of a brief burst of watery sunshine later in the afternoon.



7:20pm - Cirrus Clouds in a cobalt sky.

By 7pm I was desperate for something to photograph for #30DaysWild. The grey had cleared away so I took a photo of the sky.

9pm - Beautiful but slightly ominous.

After sundown it was lovely hearing the church bells and blackbirds singing while the light faded.

9:25pm - The grey creeping back on angels' wings.

As the sun dropped, the clouds greyed - a harbinger of things to come.

#30DaysWild - Stolen Moments with Nature

While I was in Birmingham, I visited a buttercup field and found Ragged Robin on a ragged verge.

However, once I am home, it can be hard to find time during the working week to do anything other than meet work and other commitments. It is fortunately that others doing the Wildlife Trusts' #30DaysWild challenge are teaching me how to steal moments from my day and give them to nature.

I'm also going to confess to a blogging sin - my posts are out of order. I wrote up my Day 4/5 BioBlitz before this post about Day 2 and 3.

Day 2 - Beetles at the Watford Junction

Sitting next to wildflowers while waiting for the train.

On Day 2, I travelled home from Birmingham to Uckfield. At Watford Junction, while I was waiting for the train, I sat on a low wall next to some wildflowers.

Oedemera Lurida at Watford Junction.

A couple of long, narrow Oedemera Lurida beetles jumped onto my bag and I had to carefully return them to their flowers.  I love the way nature finds its way into the unlikeliest places.

Day 3 - Taking a moment from the laptop

Foxgloves, Uckfield Sussex

Friday was exceptionally busy. I took a moment away from the laptop to admire self-sown foxgloves in our garden.

Looking forward to the Garden BioBlitz

Due to dull weather we haven't had many bees but during the next day's Garden BioBlitz, I would see nine different species including a number going in-and-out of the Foxglove bells.

 

Red Mason Bee (Osmia bicornis) - from the next weekend's BioBlitz

I used Ryan Clark's-easy-to understand guide to solitary bees on the Wildlfe Trusts website to help me understand the different types including the Mason bees, who store their pollen on the underside of their abdomen as shown in the photo and large Wool carder bee (Anthidium maculatum), which lead me a merry dance on BioBlitz day. So a big thank you to Ryan for his wonderful guide and also to the patient and hard working verifiers on iRecord, who verified my sightings and tactfully corrected my errors.

Stealing ideas from nature

It's true confession time. When gardening, I steal most of my best ideas from nature. When walking through Views (William) Wood near my Manor Park home I see many pretty sights.  One of my favourites is the mossy old stumps and coppice stools surrounded by dainty wild flowers and ferns.

Wood anemones around the foot of a coppice stool, photographed 14 April 2013

I wanted to make something similar in my garden. Wood anemones, bluebells and wild arum grow naturally there. Maybe the woodland once extended as far as the location of our 1960s home.  

Here's one I made earlier, photographed 14 April 2013

We asked a professional gardener to remove some laurels, giving us a clear space in the shade of our tall birches.  Next, I bought a couple of old coppice stools from Wilderness Wood. My family are always amused by my habit of buying manky old bits of wood but I find they make good garden ornaments without the worry that some light-fingered so-and-so will take a fancy to them.  I got most of the plants by taking pieces of what we already had in the garden. I transplanted seedling wild arums and sprinkled seed from bluebells, cuckoo flower and foxgloves. I supplemented these with ferns, hardy geraniums and a red campion-like plant that I bought from local nurseries and open gardens. I don't stick rigidly to native plants. Sometimes I choose garden species that are similar to local wild flowers. I find that these cope just as well with local conditions, including greedy deer, and extend the options available to me.

The final step was to wait. It will be a year or two before the bluebells are flowering properly but the other flowers and leaves are giving plenty of interest. So that is how I designed my little woodland garden.