Taming the wild patch

Most gardeners pull out weeds and plant cultivated varieties.  Lately, I’ve been doing exactly the opposite.

We started the wild patch some years ago by sprinkling some wild flower seeds.  The initial results were a bit disappointing because the seedlings were massacred by slugs. However the survivors did well and gave a pleasing display. Since then, the patch has been overtaken by ground cover garden plants and it is long overdue for a clear out.  The photo below was carefully composed to hide the unwanted plants.

Wild patch with teasels, purple toadflax, red valerian, hypericum and many others.

I had been at a loss as to what to do next. After the slow start we had previously, I didn't want to use mixed seeds again. Then I read Alys Fowlers article on stitchwort. The article lead me to the British Wild Flower Plants website where it is possible to buy wild flowers as seeds, plugs or half-litre pots. There were so many lovely wild flowers to choose from I didn’t know where to start.

Newly planted lady's bedstraw.

I have bought my flowers now and have found the British Wild Flower Plants people absolutely lovely to deal with. When I asked about a species that was not on their list, they said they still had a few of those and added it to the list especially for me. We were able to sort out a date when I knew someone would be in to receive my precious plants and the Interlink Express delivered them without any problems or drama.

However, before I could get my wild flowers, I had to have a clear out. I removed all those unwanted plants. While the geraniums are prolific, the euphorbias were the real problem. Their roots run deep, break easily and regrow as soon as you blink. I also removed as much cinquefoil as possible.  Although it is a wildflower, it is a real thug and I wanted to minimize the amount around my new plants.

As I worked through the patch, I was delighted to find just how much the surviving wild flowers had spread. I found myself carefully working round common yellow and purple toadflax, primroses, teasels, hypericum and the tubers of wood anemones. I also got tough with some of the more vigorous wildflowers such as marjoram and bloody cranesbill.  I’ve reduced the amount by about half to give everything else room to grow. All this has taken about half a day each weekend for the last half-dozen weeks.

Meanwhile, I have been deciding which plants to buy. I want to be sure that they have a reasonably good chance of growing well in our garden and so have been looking out for plants that thrive near where we live. 

Newly planted fox-and-cubs (diagonal line from bottom-left to top-right) and scabious, right.

My first “must have” was fox-and cubs, which is an orange flowered member of the dandelion family.  It brightens up many lawns and twittens in the area.  I added field scabious to my list after seeing it growing happily on the bypass.

Peacock butterfly on fleabane, in Ashdown Forest.

I first became aware of fleabane in the car park for Old Lodge nature reserve in Ashdown Forest – a pool of glorious yellow flowers covered in butterflies and hoverflies. Having seen it in Hempstead Lane near the horse rescue, it went on my list. My last purchase for this part of the garden was lady’s bedstraw. I can’t remember where I saw this but I have hopes of it being a good ‘doer’.

I have also sprinkled various seeds including a brightly coloured thistle and some corncockles that, a few generations of plants ago, were given to us by a neighbour.

I’ve deliberately left the edges messy, retaining some of the ground cover plants in those areas.  Partly it’s because, in proportion, they are attractive and partly to give the tiny creatures that live in the patch somewhere to hide and overwinter. Now, all I have to do is wait until the show really starts next summer.

Red Arrows, Devils and Admirals over Uckfield

What a summer it has been for aerial wonders.  In just a few weeks we have had an amazing series of flypasts by aircraft of all sorts. Closer to the ground, birds and tiny insects have been joining the display too.

Belgian Red Devils over Manor Park, Uckfield

On July the 26th the Belgian Red Devils display team flew over Uckfield to mark the unveiling of the memorial to Eugene Seghers. While I waited for them in the garden I enjoyed watching the butterflies, which I had been counting for the big butterfly count, fluttering round our flowers. 

Emperor dragonfly - similar to the one seen in our garden.

As we moved into August, we were honoured by almost daily visits by an emperor. It flew in glittering circles for several minutes at a time, bobbing and dipping as it hunted its prey.  Anything that escaped the attentions of the dragonfly and was still flying at dusk may well have ended up as a meal for the bats that fluttered and swooped round our front garden.

Hoverfly (Volucella Inanis) on our Marjoram

While I was waiting for the Red arrows team to come over, I was entertained by colourful hoverflies buzzing round our flowers.  I’ve been looking at them more closely this year and have identified 10 different species – and those are just the ones that are big and slow enough for me to get a photo.

The Red Arrows - not a great photo but I was pleased to get a camera on them at all.

Towards the end of the some days, swifts screamed overhead. Apparently they never stop flying, not even in sleep.  As summer drifts into autumn, these summer visitors have started their long migration to Africa.

Comma butterfly - a sign that autumn is on its way?

After the wonderful, idiosyncratic procession of aircraft coming away from Shoreham at the end of August, we start to see V’s of geese flying to and from their feeding grounds. Newly minted red admirals and colourful commas herald the coming of autumn.

The Big Butterfly Count 2014

It's not often that I get an excuse for wandering round the garden for quarter of an hour but the Big Butterfly Count gave me one. Between the 19th of July and the 10th of August, people all over the country counted butterflies for periods of 15 minutes. This fine example of citizen science is backed by The Butterfly Conservation people. This year’s results can be found on the web site.  

I did 10 counts in our Uckfield garden. Here is my top five countdown ...

At number 5, the Small Tortoiseshells. There were just 3 in my counts but, as a Guardian article explains, their numbers have been very low over the last few years and have recovered due to the wet weather earlier in the year, which boosted the nettles that feed their caterpillars.

Small Tortoiseshell on a dahlia.

We have a joint number 4 this week, with 4 sightings each: Red Admiral and the Ringlets. The Red Admiral was probably the first butterfly I became aware of as a child, as it visited the asters and buddleia in our London garden. I’ve only become aware of the Ringlet this year. The open wings are the colour of fine dark chocolate and it was only when I started looking at the butterflies properly for the count that I realised that they were not Meadow Browns.

Ringlet

At number 3, with 11 records, Large Whites appeared to dance around the garden.  Lovely to see but, in previous years, their caterpillars have wreaked havoc by chomping through nasturtium leaves.

At number 2, with 14 sightings, modest Meadow Browns fluttered round marjoram during the earlier weeks of the count.

Finally, in the lead with 24 sightings, orange and brown Gatekeepers, seemed to explode from beneath my feet almost every time I walked across our shaggy grass.

Gatekeeper

We have had a super variety of butterflies in the garden this year.  This chart shows the totals from my 10 counts.

Sadly there are some absences such as Holly Blue and Small Copper. We can only hope that they’ll be back another year.

Of beasties and blooms

Views (Williams) Wood - Repelling the invasion

A little while ago the Woodland Trust asked for some volunteers to help Sandra, of the TrUck project, to remove some of the Himalayan balsam which, in their words, "is getting a foothold in a couple of places within the wood". A couple of months ago I had noticed small seedlings beginning to grow amongst the bluebells and other wild flowers. Now those 'seedlings' are taller than I am. If left to grow and spread, they would soon overwhelm the other wild flowers and cause other problems as explained in The River Uck - not so pretty in pink.
 

Himalayan Balsam in Views (Williams) Wood.

Unfortunately, I couldn't join the rest of the party so I went and did some by myself. As described in an earlier post, I have done this before and am happy that I can identify the plants properly.  The work itself is reasonably easy, it is just a matter of pulling up these shallow rooted plants and stacking them by the path.  I was there from about quarter past nine and had the wood more-or-less to myself. The only noise was birdsong and church bells, which was lovely.  While I worked in the shade of the trees, I saw many different types of wild flowers including dainty enchanter's nightshade, speedwell and red campion.
 

Red campion.

As I progressed and the heap of discarded Himalayan balsam got higher inquisitive dogs nosed around my work and their owners stopped for a chat. Later joggers and family groups passed by.
 

Heap of Himalayan balsam.

After about two and a half hours I went home, having spent an enjoyable morning getting rid of an alien invader - and don't worry - I'm not greedy, there is more balsam for other people to pull up.
 
 

Himalayan Balsam and honeysuckle.

Summer bus trip

We’re all going on a summer holiday …

Thank you to Leilani Mitchell of the Link Centre for saying "let's bring a holiday feel into our working week this week shall we? How will you do it ?" So far things I've done have included:

• remembering to look over the top of my laptop to see the flowers and birds in the garden
• strolling rather than scurrying to get the paper.

Just very simple things that don't cut into work time but bring a holiday moment into the working day. On Wednesday this was tested a bit. Not only did I have to do my commute to Leatherhead but the trains were cancelled. Eventually, a bus turned up and whisked us off to Haywards Heath.

Rather than getting annoyed at the detours and delays I thought I would enjoy the impromptu summer bus trip. After all, sitting high up in the coach, I was able to see so much more than I usually do when driving.

 

First - a flash of blue seen from the Uckfield by-pass.  A jay had flown across the road. There are plenty of flowers to see here. Ox-eye daisies, buttercups and, best of all, the unexpected treat of blue meadow cranesbill - I think that's what it was, we were going a bit too fast to see it properly.  As we swept on towards Haywards Heath I was able to see over hedges into fields with contented black and white cows and sheep. Near Chailey Heritage, I spotted the Exmoor ponies that graze the common, keeping the vegetation under control.

Wild orchid amongst flowers and grasses like the ones I saw from the bus.

Some fields are ungrazed and rich with white and yellow flowers stud the ripening, hazy purple-gold of the grass. Just before we entered Haywards Heath I was thrilled to see a field full of wild orchids.

Now that was better than getting steamed up about the delay, wasn’t it?

Garden Bio Blitz 2014

The idea of the annual garden BioBlitz is to list of all the wildlife found in your garden over a 24 hour period. I first heard about it on last year’s BBC Springwatch but didn't get round to doing anything about it until this year. Really it was Ryan Clark (do yourself a favour and look at his photos) whose tweets and retweets encouraged me to have a go this year.

Two male fallow deer - Photo from Bushnell trail camera.

I thought I knew about the wildlife that visits and grows in our large and rather shaggy garden. We know we get deer, foxes and badgers because we have seen field signs (that's poo and footmarks to you) and photos from the Bushnell. Also, I was confident that we have a couple of dozen species of wild flowers, frogs and a small assortment  of "creepy crawlies".

However there were plenty of surprises for me:

• the sheer number and variety of species in our garden
• how beautiful and strange grasses are under a magnifying glass
• we have liverworts between the paving slabs - the last time I paid attention to one of those, I was studying their weird lifecycle at school more than quarter of a century ago
• the wonderful and colourful variety of insect life in our garden and how little I know about it.

Mint moth - about 13 mm - tiny with beautifully intricate markings.

The BioBlitz really encouraged me to look at plants and creatures in the garden properly. For example, it had never really occurred to me to try and identify the tiny brown moths we find in our garden. A few minutes with UKMoth’s keyword search showed me that they are mint moths and I was able to add them to my list.   In the end I found and identified 105 species.

It is very motivating knowing that there are hundreds of others doing the same thing. Also the BioBlitz organisers had set up mechanisms to help people identify their finds via tweets or the iSpot website.

Extract from BioBlitz Info Centre (5th June 2014).

On Sunday morning I got most of the results into iRecord. A few days later I finished off and checked back on the site to see what other people had recorded. I was delighted to find that I was in the top 20 of the Recorders League. Then I spent a little time browsing round the site, and found that someone was doing the BioBlitz only a couple of miles from me. 

Recorder's League. Extract from iRecord, 5 June 2014.

At some point I will go back and set up a filter so I can see what local people are recording and I'll definitely spend some more time in the garden finding out what's there and putting it on iRecord.

So next year, I’ll be back. Meanwhile, this is me, recording wildlife in our garden ...