In my defence I had not clocked how dire the wildlife
situation had become in the UK. I suffered from shifting baselines and simply
accepted a lack of butterflies, the disappearance of birds etc as the new
normal. I had failed to connect that the way I garden might make a difference.
One of my immediate changes was to alter the way I garden — although I don’t
use pesticides as we have kept bees since 2000, I have been afflicted with
Ecological Tidiness Disorder and am attempting to overcome this. Also although I
had wildlife at the back of my mind when I garden, I didn’t really think about
the eco-system and how things were interlinked, right down to the microbes in
the soil.
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| Verge with nettles where I hope the butterflies will grow. |
For example, I love butterflies and try to ensure that we
have nectar plants. (We also keep bees so this is pretty easy). However, I had
not really clocked that caterpillars have different needs than butterflies. I wasn’t
thinking about the whole lifecycle of the insect. Some of my UK favourites (the
Red Admiral and Peacock butterflies) feast almost exclusively on stinging nettles.
No prizes for guessing what plant I have spent ages pulling up. While I am not
at the stage where I want to give the entire garden over to nettles, I am ensuring
we have several large clumps which are in sunny spaces. Hopefully that will entice
the butterflies to lay their eggs, and the lifecycle to take place so that my
garden can be filled with butterflies in the late summer. Instead of thinking –
weed, I am thinking nettles will bring butterflies. In California where I grew
up, if you want Monarch butterflies, the best way to do it is to plant milk
thistle. In the UK, it is the humble stinging nettle.
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| My liberated lawn. |
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| birdhouse where tree bumblebees are nesting. |
Similarly I have decided to liberate the back lawn from the
tyranny of mowing. Eventually I am hoping for a wildflower strewn orchard,
maybe with an orchid or two (a woman can dream). But it is going to take time
for the wildflowers to establish, particularly as the soil is rich and the
ryegrass does grow strongly. In the autumn after I have done the annual mow, I
will scatter Yellow rattle seeds as the plant preys on ryegrass and makes it
easier for the wildflowers to set. This is the second year of my experiment and
already I have noticed more birdlife visiting the area. We have such red-listed
species (i.e. those species whose numbers have crashed) as the house sparrow,
dunnock and song thrush nesting in the garden. A pair of bullfinches have also
started visiting, instead of just coming around when the damson is about to
burst into bloom. I do think it is working but my husband sometimes just sees
the scruffy lawn. And I discovered the bird box which I should have cleaned out has become home to tree bumblebees who are new pollinators to the UK but at the moment very welcome.
It is about changing mindsets and recognising that sometimes
what I consider normal isn’t how it used to be at all. I have been blogging on my own blog about my journey and what I am learning.
In this age of doom and gloom about the environment, it feels
good to be doing just a little more.
When not gardening, Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical romance in a wide range of time periods for Harlequin Historical,Her next book A Deal with Her Rebel Viking will be published in December 2019. You can find out more about Michelle and her books at www.michellestyles.co.uk
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