It must be said, I’ve always loved the outdoors! I’ve always loved nature! When I reached primary school age, I was allowed to explore the neighbourhood. My folks meant the cul-de-sac, but I had other ideas. There was a vast woodland just a short walk from the family home which felt like a wilderness at the edge of the world. Wild! Like Fangorn!
At least one species of Bumblebee, the Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), is now active all winter with Queens produced in the summer creating nests in autumn. With the onset of climate change, the UK is experiencing milder and wetter winters, in turn allowing some plants to continue flowering or flowering earlier, providing food for the buff tail. Winter honeysuckle, mahonia, and hellebores are firm favourites. As a consequence, pollinators are on the wing year round and we can be there to lend a helping hand!
In the interests of transparency, my garden wasn’t always the welcoming home to pollinators it is now. As a wildlife photographer, I’ve always viewed flowers and pollinators as intrinsically linked. Although, for the garden, it took some time to really fill the space with ‘quality plants’. I didn’t pick up a spade, carve up my garden, planting solely pollinator friendly plants in some kind of instinctive masterstroke...
You’re still here… After four chapters, you’re still here! Thank you! I truly wish this was the part where sit back and share a glass of your favourite tipple and reminisce about a job well done. Sadly not. There’s no way of sugar coating this. The catastrophic collapse of our insect and invertebrate populations is happening. It’s undeniable.
The vast majority of us gardeners really garden for pleasure, not to save the world or engineer a green-thumbed revolution... However, while we’re upside down in our borders or potting up our spring bulbs, we should remember that we are part of something bigger!
Pollinating insects and flowering plants have been co-evolving for over 70 million years. A few elaborate symbiotic relationships aside, the vast majority or plants, whether its bulbs, annuals, perennials, trees or shrubs are essentially open to pollination to whichever ‘creature’ lands on its flower at the right place, at the right time. But the intricacies are fascinating. The adaptations between plant and pollinator are simply mind-blowing.
As I’ve discovered on Instagram, my followers really appreciate good photography. Quality matters. Your followers are interested in what you show them and, to a limited extent, living vicariously through your lens and the snapshots of a world that you choose to reveal. Quality images and video can only help improve their experience when followers land on your grid or read through your blog.
As I’m typing, our Japanese Maples are glowing with golds ambers, and garnets. The hostas are yellowing and the grasses bronzing. Autumn is most definitely knocking on the door and soon it will storm through and make itself at home with misty mornings, dew-laden spider webs, and the first sparkly frosts. Then I’ll be enjoying one of the most satisfying harvests of the year! Gathering up fallen leaves to make gorgeous, wonderful, leafmould.
Of course, plants are essential. No one would disagree with that! However, there is another element that makes a good garden. Arguably underrated but most assuredly subjective. That element is the Accessories, i.e. the design embellishments, garden decor, those finishing touches.
Planting bulbs in your borders brings an early heart-warming cheer, heralding the changing of the seasons, as we slowly meander our way out of late winter. Even though they’re tiny, those first snowdrops, cyclamen, aconites, and crocus are worth more than their weight in gold. Especially after weeks of dull browns and greens within a fairly lifeless garden. The structure of evergreen hedges and topiary have served an important purpose but now the interest is waning. Those early gems, much loved by us gardeners desperate for life and colour outside those foggy rain-drenched windows are loved even more by emerging bumblebees, drowsy and famished after a winter’s hibernation.
Spring bulbs truly lift our spirits after a long winter. Their oh so cheery dispositions break the monotony of greens and browns and suddenly, we have colour! Yellows, blues, pinks, reds, purples! We transition from monochrome to technicolour. The wonderful thing about container displays is that you can shuffle pots around to keep the display looking its absolute best. When those early flowering crocus, iris, and early daffs are fading, swap them out for the musacri, richly coloured tulips, majestic crown imperials, and pom-pom alliums. With a little forethought in planning and planting, you can have a display in bloom from February right through to June.
There is something utterly magical about bulbs. Take a handful of dry and shrivelled lifeless bulbs, throw them in the ground, wait a few weeks and, like the mythical beanstalk, they burst from the ground with a bounty of beautiful blooms. Flowering bulbs are more popular than ever and for good reason. The range of species available to us humble home gardeners has increased dramatically. Alongside the species there are a staggering number of bred cultivars with a truly bewildering array of forms and colours. Did you know there are over 3,000 tulips cultivars alone?!
