Make space for bees and other insects – and help fight garden pests
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Gardening on the Edge by Diana Wayland
Bees are in decline due to overuse of insecticides, both commercially and in gardens, and they and other pollinating insects are vital for the production of plant crops.
With more and more people increasing their intake of plant-based foods, the importance of maintaining and increasing plant food production, including in our homes, has never been greater.
Instead of using pesticides I try to ensure that my plants are in the most optimum health – not over-watered or under-watered (not easy!), with sufficient nutrients and space – because this helps them to fight off the attentions of pests.
I use barriers such as netting over brassicas to keep out the cabbage white butterflies and edging and windbreaking round beds to deter carrot fly.
I also feed the birds. They catch many of the insect pests and help keep the kailyard pest-free.
I have also started to develop beds of flowering plants within the kailyard to provide food for bees and other pollinators. Having grown lots of herbs and wild flowers for decades, I know that many of their blossoms are bee magnets. Many of these also flower early in the year, of great importance to bees at that time.
In my unfinished herb garden I have comfrey, water avens, wallflowers, chives and ground ivy, all full of flowers. And bees.
Near the kailyard I have a grotto under our Sitka spruce windbreak, already planted with snowdrops, wild primroses, purple-leaved bugle and Cocus tommasinianus, all found growing here. I added lesser celandine, which grows locally, wild daffodils, and native bluebells which I bought in the green.
They were joined a few years ago by self-set scurvy grass, a testament to how much marine salt we get, for it thrives in such conditions and has continued to self-set ever since. These plants flower in succession from late winter to early summer, providing an important food source for bees.
Last year I created a new herbaceous border. It was fully planted up by late July. After being battered by strong westerlies shortly after planting, followed by an October which rained throughout, then a fairly cold winter, even colder February, Arctic April and then drought, I am astonished at how good it is already looking.
Deliberately I have gone for old favourites, plants considered by many to be plain and old-fashioned. Among them are perennial cornflower, golden rod, Geranium Johnson's Blue, lupins, aquilegia, yellow loosestrife, snow in summer and montbretia, plus wild flowers such as ox-eye daisy, sweet rocket, red campion, red valerian, thrift (sea pink) and harebell.
I avoid more showy modern cultivars of these cottage garden favourites because the older varieties are tougher; more resilient to extremes of wet, drought and wind. I garden in an extreme environment. I can either grow older and wild strains of plants that stand a chance of survival, or I can opt to have modern, showy varieties that are less robust and will fail.
The other reason is quite simple, and is true of wild flowers and herbs as well as many older forms of herbaceous perennial. Their flowers are single, and far easier for bees to work than the more complicated showy double versions.
So if you want to plant to help bees, go for the single flowered forms.
I am also planning plants for hoverflies, like foxgloves, fennel and Michaelmas daisy; their larvae eat pests. Their space, and time will come.
