pignut ..

Not a childish insult but a plant with an image problem due to its name - pignut (conopodium majus).

Pignut is a pretty little perennial and a member of what Jill and I still call the umbellifer family (although now mysteriously renamed by the botanists the apiacae).

Its leaves are are green and delicate. Its umbel flower is also an understated little starburst of white.

Here it is, growing against the thorn hedge we planted along the boundary in February 2011. You can see that the scythe operative needs to have his wits about him or all kinds of treasures could be mown down.

The pignut name comes from its chestnut sized tuber, loved equally by pigs and other foragers. Pignut is not the prettiest name for what is a lovely, often overlooked little plant. I'll leave it to establish a good patch - but hope to harvest some of the seeds. They'll make a pretty addition as the wildflower meadows develop.

Along most of its length, the hedge of hawthorn, field maple, hazel, yew, holly, spindle and scrambling honeysuckle is flourishing. An understory of wildflowers will only add to its appearance.

smog over north nottingham

Weather presenters today showed our country covered by what appeared to be an ugly cold sore. The cold sore was their graphical representation of the heavy pollution hanging over us due to atmospheric conditions.

A mist has hung over the garden all morning contrasting sharply with yesterday's clear blue sky of early spring. Peacock butterflies were showing well and the first and most recognisable of our butterflies - the brimstone - was on the wing. Big and butter yellow. And giving its name 'the butterfly'.

Brimstone always have a sense of urgency in these parts, searching for a place to lay their eggs. And they're very picky - they must lay on buckthorn or occasionally on alder buckthorn.

this insignificant twig is a baby buckthorn plant

Buckthorn will only establish on moist soils and so I understand why the brimstone is a butterfly in a hurry around here. Our dry, sandy soils are not suited to establishing buckthorn and so they must travel far and wide to find their larval food plant.

My mission is biodiversity here at Cordwood and hence my order for 10 small buckthorn plants last week. Now, you have to be a bit careful with buckthorn as their country name is Purging Buckthorn. If you fancy a bit of laxity, eat their berries. Their latin name 'cathartica' is there to remind us that they have a reputation for having a powerful purgative effect. Make a tart from buckthorn berries and give it your OFSTED inspectors when they arrive.

But the birds thrive on them and I just have to get the little plants established for their first year. I can dig spadefuls of compost into their planting holes; keep them well watered in their first year and give them a good mulching of bark chippings.

Then you won't need a postcode to find us next spring
because the optimist here predicts a butter yellow* smog of brimstones lingering around the place as they seek out the Cordwood buckthorns for their precious little eggs.

* There may be a dappling within the smog because green hairstreak butterflies and dark umber moths are also attracted to buckthorn.

rain chains..

I love pinching other peoples' ideas.

When we were headteachers together, our little band incanted that saying we all learned in the infant playground - "I'll show you mine if you show me yours..." We were part of a lovely, trusting group of friends and so all our health and safety policies or home school agreements ... and on and on and on ... would show a striking resemblance. It was great working in that spirit of mutual support in which I could pass other peoples ideas off as my own. I remember one occasion when a friend was expecting a school inspection and asked to use my Equal Opportunities policy. I was pleased to send it across  especially since it was his policy in the first place and I'd replaced his school name with ours. I saw it as a form of recycling and energy efficiency. It certainly saved my energy.

So, there we are, at RHS Rosemoor in North Devon for a reverential day looking at plants. Bliss! When, what is hanging there to solve our problem..... but a rain chain made from plastic chains.

Now, let me explain. Our architect, Mike Ellison is superb. But he also likes to challenge his clients. And right, slap bang in the view on the right from our lounge window should be a gutter downpipe. Not the prettiest of things to look at, I can tell you.

Which is where the idea of rain chains comes in. Instead of a downpipe, we have a chain down which the rain trickles on rainy days.

But, my gosh, brass rain chains (with every link in the shape of a butterfly .... or umbrella ... or a bereted octopus playing the French Horn whilst dancing on the roof of a 1964 Ford Cortina) are mighty costly. And then, the RHS Rosemoor revelation. Plastic chains. Why didn't I think of that?

So here you see the first of our two rain chains. Not quite finished yet. The Great Man suggested building a container around each which could collect the rain and create a terrace feature with aquatic plants. The container would conceal the vertical drain pipe, down which the rain will trickle when it reaches the required level so that the container doesn't flood onto the terrace. Brilliant.

And with more than a nod to biodiversity too. It will be so great to provide our own aquatic mosquito nursery with all those wriggling nymphs, just building up a mighty hunger. Till, one warm evening they'll emerge from their watery home and only have to fly a few feet to feed ravenously on us while
sitting on the terrace. Our guests will be like a convenience store for mosquitoes....

The Great Man thinks of everything....

help for insects....

Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust described 2012 as a disastrous year for butterflies. Take it as read that bumblebees, honeybees, ladybirds - every darned wriggling and flying little creature was clobbered by the awful summer which was followed by a deep and never-ending winter and then a spring that didn't arrive till summer!
If we look at this disastous year in the context of Dr. Sheila Wrights (Wollaton Hall's Keeper of Biology) observation that we have lost 90% of our insects over the last century, we're looking at something pretty serious.
Serious for them, but selfishly, for us too. Without insects our flowers won't be pollinated and when pest numbers surge, the natural predators will not be there to balance things up. That's putting aside the beauty of the diversity of animal life we've lost or the impact on bird and bat numbers that rely on insects to raise their young.
Falling insect numbers are attributable to factors operating on a much larger scale than we can influence as individuals. But as gardeners we can play a part in remedying this.

Comma and Red Admiral feed on Buddleya x weyeriana 'Sungold'

Choose and plant simple flowers. Insects cannot use double flowers. And a range of different flowers will help a range of insects. There are short-tongued and long-tongued bumblebees that feed on different types of flowers. You can tell which type they are by listening to them speak.
Have as long a flowering year as you can create. Early crocus and primrose give insects a food source at the beginning of the year. Snowdrops too are easy to grow and to multiply. The temperature within their flower cup can be 2 degrees warmer than the surrounding air. Like going into a warm cafe on a cold day. In the summer have fun in finding for yourself those flowers that insects visit most. They love herbs!
This is the time of year when next years queen bumblebees have mated and are looking for nectar rich flowers so that they can build up fat reserves and hibernate successfully in their underground burrows until spring. They can tolerate temperatures up to minus 19 degrees if their bodies are properly fuelled. Humble ivy flowers are amongst the best late nectar sources but ivy only flowers when growing vertically for instance on posts and stumps and trees.
Leave an untidy corner! Those overwintering bumblebees and all the other hibernating insects need somewhere undisturbed to hide safely until the spring.
And returning to Wollaton Hall's Sheila Wright, Sheila tells us that one of the best things to do to help wildlife is to put aside pesticides and go organic.
Let's give those insects a helping hand.

Buddleja x weyeriana 'Sungold' - Golden Yellow Flowered Butterfly Bush

Buddleja davidii has long been known as 'The Butterfly Bush'. 

Comma and red admiral enjoy late nectar on buddleja x weyariana

Its slender flower stems and rich scent are a magnet to butterflies in August. The bushes sometimes shimmer with the fluttering wings of red admiral, small tortoiseshell, comma, painted lady and peacock butterflies - all filling up on the nutritious nectar the plants give so generously and that prepare the butterflies for the long winter hibernation. These sources of energy giving late nectar play an important part in butterfly life cycles, improving the insects chances of surviving long, cold winters. But all too soon the purple, lilac or white flowers fade and butterflies move away.

But this year I have discovered poached egg yellow Buddleja x weyeriana and have found that its golden flower spikes are still attracting butterflies in October. 

As with all buddlejas, the golden form strikes easily from cuttings and will flower, as ours have, in their first year. It has been given the 'Award of Garden Merit' by our Royal Horticultural Society - an indication that this plant is of high quality.

2012 has been a dismal year for British butterflies but the Buddleja x weyeriana we have planted in a sunny corner of the Cedar Walk at Cordwood have been attracting late flying butterflies by the dozen. I was delighted to count several commas - they have been notable by their absence this year. Welcome back.

 

 

 

here comes autumn...

bumble bee on dahlia

hornet

The season has quickly changed. Heavy rain today and clouds over six miles thick according to the weather forecast!!

So, the wonderful Cordwood summer 2012 is fading to a memory.

Perhaps Mike took these on the last day of summer, last week?

wood mouse

It wasn't all fun though. We cleared and prepared two new beds in the vegetable garden and cleared brambles from beneath pines along the Cedar walk.

Nice one Mike!

More of his photos at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/69361694@N06/sets/

fungi in path

hornet (vespa crabro)

Lunchtime at Cordwood and I went to pick an apple. Something had hollowed out an apple on one of our Greensleeves cordons and as I touched the empty apple a very large, unsteady wasp tumbled out, followed by another. It was a European Hornet - a first for us at Cordwood.

European Hornet (Vespa crabro)

The Hornet is larger than a wasp and is usually found in woodland. Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust tells me that their numbers are increasing.

Hornets look alarming and have a sting like that of a wasp - but bigger. For this reason, the mild mannered hornet is feared and has been persecuted. It is protected in some EU countries. For much of the year they are the gardeners' friend, consuming invertebrate pests. But they can devastate beehives and so are feared by beekeepers.

Hornets also have a love of fruit, especially apples. As I discovered.

They are impressive beasts, if cumbersome in flight and ponderous as they gnaw apples.

But wonderful and welcome visitors. I hope to take better photos than this snatched snap as they work their way through the rest of our meagre apple crop!!

where are the small tortoiseshell butterflies?

The small tortoiseshell butterfly is one of our most common butterflies.

Frequently seen in early spring, their eggs are laid on nettle leaves and a second brood of butterflies emerges to bathe in the summer sun before hibernating for the winter.

Our buddleja flowers shimmer with the fluttering wings of this beautiful insect in high summer.
But not in 2012.

Today I saw my first small tortoiseshell butterfly of the year. My guess is that their numbers were decimated in the wettest spring on record and that they were hit by a 'double whammy' when we experienced the least sunny summer on record.

The pattern is not rerstricted to our garden. Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust also reported that no-one had seen small tortoiseshells this year and asked members to report any they did see.

Hooray, then - because a solitary small tortoiseshell arrived on a Cordwood buddleja davidii today and stayed still long enough for me to photograph it on my mobile phone...

If you see a small tortoiseshell butterfly report it to John Ellis jellis@nottswt.co.uk

a disastrous year..?

As I write, the weather forecast is for some parts of the English midlands to receive a months rain in 24 hours. Following fourteen months of drought, we have now had the wettest June on record.

Now, of course our little island has always had changeable weather - and this is why weather watching is a national pastime. But these weather extremes are becoming more frequent with consequences for us all.

And although we humans suffer during weather extremes, I fear that our wildlife is suffering more.

Linda has reported on the problems that this dismal spell of weather has had for the Cordwood honeybees. The cold wet weather has prevented bees from foraging and the same conditions have brought flowering to a halt. As a consequence honeybee colonies have been unable to collect pollen to feed their larvae or nectar which is the energy that drives the hive and makes the honey.

I know that this year the Cordwood site has been hammered by our building work, but nevertheless, I have recorded almost no summer butterflies yet, apart from a few speckled wood (Pararge aegeria) and an odd peacock (Inarchis io).

Tonight we will be recording moths on site with our friend John Osborne and Dr Sheila Wright. I hope that this recording can become a regular part of the Cordwood calendar in the years ahead. Routine species recording allows us to build an accurate picture of how our wildlife is doing and without this accurate data, we cannot understand population fluctuations or take arguments forward about changes affecting wildlife. Frequently overlooked and woefully under-recorded, moths do not have the same 'wow' factor for many people that ospreys or red kites have. But their numbers and distribution need to be more widely understood. I predict that our 2012 Cordwood count will be a low one. Although moths fly during rain, they will have had the same problems with food sources that butterflies have had. There just won't be as many around.

The arcane and under-recorded world of moths means that we have little idea of what we will record tonight. A highlight would be to record the rare Pauper Pug moth (Eupithecia egenaria). Although scarce, its larvae feed on lime tree leaves and we have five beautiful mature limes in our orchard/vegetable garden and two more in the cedar walk. I have taken this photo of a Pauper Pug from the UK moths site with their permission.

Our native wildlife has been buffeted by our variable weather since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago and so why is a bit of wet weather so potentially disastrous?

In the past, a poor breeding season has seen a reduction in populations, but the following year, the gaps have been filled by an influx from adjoining areas. An excellent breeding year has often followed as competition has been reduced and the best sites have been available.

In twenty first century Britain we have so 'developed' our landscape, so destructed so much of the vegetation and habitat for wildlife and fragmented populations to such an extent that that populations are in danger of becoming locally extinct after poor breeding seasons. When a poor year occurs, there are no other nearby populations to fill the gaps. This then becomes part of a remorseless fall in the wealth of our native fauna that sees reductions year on year...

Tonight we are thinking about moths and the reduction in their numbers. But I will also be taking my bat detector during our moth watch in the hope that I can record the local bat population. Of course, a reduction in moth numbers affects those creatures higher up the food chain who depend upon moths for food like bats. Poor weather and insufficient food  ... not a great year for bats either?

So, this wet weather has led to a dismal early summer for us humans, but potentially something far worse for wildlife. 

giving log walls that 'lived in' look ....

When we cleared the orchard, my job was to chainsaw the trees and reduce them to manageable lengths. We ended with piles of stacked cherry and recently decided to use them as log walls separating the orchard and the vegetable garden.

The wood may eventually be burned, but while it dries it is great to look at and useful to invertebrates, small mammals and birds.

Here's Mike and Jake building the third of our short walls.

To give it a 'lived in' feel I'm placing little offsets of Sempervivums in the tops of the walls- they'll look great if they establish.

And I've planted ivy cultivars - Hedera helix 'Tripod', 'Ceridwen' and dwarf 'Anita'. Wrens and robins will love chasing small spiders through the foliage as the plants begin to climb the log wall.

free organic polytunnel pest control

Our polytunnel (hoop house) is filling and as the cuttings and seedlings grow, they provide a rich diet for pests that are beginning to colonise.

When plentiful food is joined by warm, moist conditions the pests multiply!

So, I was delighted this week to find a big, fat lady sitting in the polytunnel as I moved pots and trays: a female common toad (Bufo bufo).

All amphibians are under threat in Britain, including our toad. But they are also easily overlooked or seen as being so ordinary that their presence is not recorded. When John Osborne, Nottinghamshire's County Herpetology Recorder surveyed our site last year he told me that there were no records of toad in our area.

Well, here's the proof that they are around!

Female toads are bigger than males. Males and females only spend the short breeding season in water, where the females lay their long strings of spawn which hatch in tad (or toad) poles. Toads have a terrestrial existence for the rest of the year and are truly 'the gardeners' friend', hunting down slugs and other harmful invertebrates. Toads do not cause warts, but the bumps under their skin do hold a nasty substance that stops predators eating them.

I think they're wonderful creatures and warmly welcome them into our polytunnel, where they provide free organic pest control.

the hedgerow border comes to life

In March I wrote about the empty hedgerow border and our plans to make it a buzzing, insect friendly corner.

I had collected red campion (Silene dioica) seeds from local wasteground, germinated the seeds and grown them as plug plants during the summer.

Hooray - the little plugs have loved their new home under the hedge and have become mature flowering plants. The first flowers are showing and they will soon be forming vermillion clouds along the boundary.

Also flowering are native primrose (Primula vulgaris). And soon to flower are native foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) and recently added lemon coloured giant verbascum (Verbascum thapsus).

In the polytunnel, pots and pots of native honeysuckle (lonicera perycyclemenum) cuttings and seedlings are growing on, almost ready to provide sweet evening scent intertwined among the hawthorn hedge and birch trees of Picnic Wood.

thwarted.....

Compost making is at the very heart of good gardening. And our soil is so poor that it needs as much compost as we can pile into it.

So, in line with best organic practice I've built a series of compost bins and collected compostable material to layer up like a gorgeous, warm, slowly rotting lasagne: grass cuttings, cardboard, bracken, weeds, manure, kitchen waste, the stuff from Becca's rabbit hutches ....
Having got plenty of ingredients I was ready to cook..  I decided to begin by shredding the bracken using the electric mower.

I grabbed my first handful of bracken .... and disturbed a robin and discovered her nest of five eggs hidden inside my bracken pile. Hmmmm. Two weeks of incubation and a further three weeks before the chicks fledge.

I think I'll begin composting in around a month from now!!!!

water

One of the best ways of attracting wildlife to the garden is by providing water. And if your garden is too small for a pond, you can still help the thirsty.

Any shallow container will do.

Here we have used part of a broken terracotta plant pot. We all know that birds use the water for drinking and for bathing. But many other creatures depend on the water we provide. The footprint (right) is from a grey squirrel that we had disturbed as it drank.

A greenhouse tray placed in the sun and filled with pebbles and then topped up with water has proved irresistible to honeybees that constantly buzzed too and fro from the water filled tray and their hives.

Honeybees need water for their own survival, but they also need it to dilute stored honey before feeding it to their larvae. The intense activity today suggests thriving colonies.

Honeybees also spread water on the surface of the honeycomb to cool the nest by evaporation on hot days.

An absorbent carpet had become puddled with dew and rainwater and was equally attractive to the bees. Slightly less attractive - but effective!

These containers do need regular attention and require topping up during periods of dry weather.

insect friendly hedgerow border

On the northwest corner of the site is an overgrown hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) hedge. At around twenty feet high, it needs a good haircut. We still need to decide on whether we simply 'top' the hedge to bring it down to a more manageable six feet high, or lay the hedge in the traditional Midlands Bullock hedge style.


A decision is needed before the growing season gets too much closer!!


The hedge is straggling and thin. We hope to thicken the hedge over the coming years with holly (Ilex aquifolium) and dog rose (Rosa canina) so that there is a more secure boundary and one that is less easily seen through after leaf fall. A few of my stash of honeysuckle (Lonicera pericyclemenum) seedlings will also adorn this section of the hedge. Can't you just picture it? It will be beautiful!

But the exciting planting will come when we begin to establish a wildflower border on our southern side of the hedge during the spring. All will be simple flowers that insects can nuzzle into, guzzling nectar and dusting themselves in pollen.


We have already planted red campion (Silene dioica) in this section and have seedling foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) ready to be moved in. I will broadcast more of the red campion seed - last year I collected lots!

We will also other native wildflowers including the bee magnet that is Vipers Bugloss (Echium vulgare), White Campion (Silene alba) and Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata).

Good old Honesty (Lunaria annua) , towering Giant Verbascum (Verbascum thapsus) and bee-friendly Borage (Boragio officinalis) will also go in in year one.

I am also interested in sowing Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus). This is an old perennial vegetable variety.

What a wonderful picture!!

umbellifers ... not so 'umble!

The plant family of umbellifers (or apiaceae) has been a real fascination this summer. They are frequently aromatic, hollow stemmed with flowers held on umbrella ribs. From the tiny pignut that flowers on our site continuously, through cow parsley of hedgerows and verges - throughout the summer, there are umbellifers offering flower and then attractive seed heads - and sometimes delicious roots or leaves.


Imagine a cup made out of frogspawn or tapioca - that is the flowering head of our native wild carrot (Daucus carota)! Delicate and attractive, its foliage carries that distinctive carrot scent making it easy to identify and it flowers late in the season.


Whilst on holiday on Colonsay (in the Scottish Inner Hebrides) wild angelica (Angelica sylvestris) was in flower. Pretty pompoms of white flower held high on hollow stalks.


On our Cordwood site, giant hogweed flowers due to the extra fertility of mushroom compost. It is supposed to get its name because pigs like to eat it. You only have to hold the flower head to your nose to get the strong stench of pigs - that is the derivation of its name! It is a bit of a bruiser with 'sharp elbows' allowing it to rise above the surrounding undergrowth and then open its umbrella flower head above the competition. Late in summer it produces these chunky, mathematical seed heads.


Quite by accident this year we allowed our parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) plants to flower and seed on our allotment. The plants reached an amazing seven feet in height with a graceful open habit. Like all umbellifers, their flowers were massively attractive to invertebrates and they went on to give us the gift of these pale golden seed heads. We collected a large envelope of seed for sowing next year. It didn't surprise me to see a designer use parsnips in an award winning garden at RHS Chelsea this year. The grace and height of parsnip plants will fit perfectly into the 'praire planting' even though these will probably be biennuals rather than perennials.


And on the subject of flower show stars, a subtle star of the show at the RHS Tatton Flower Show was  French Meadow Parsley (Orlaya grandiflora). Our own culinary parsley is an umbellifer cousin. We tried to buy French Meadow Parsley at the show but stallholders were keeping their plants so that they could propagate from seed.

Their utility, beauty and attraction for invertebrates marks them out as future signature flowers of our new garden.

collecting and growing honeysuckle (lonicera pericyclemenum) seeds

Summer evenings are not complete without the scent of honeysuckle hanging in invisible veils across paths or through gardens.

William Robinson (The Wild Garden) commends 'tree drapery' to us and urges us to train climbers 'in free ways over trees'.

Not only is this aesthetically pleasing, but climbers (especially our native ones) are especially useful to wildlife. In other luckier counties, the white admiral butterfly uses the honeysuckle as a larval food plant and the pied flycatcher is said to use the peeling bark of established plants for nesting material. In Nottinghamshire we can expect mature plants to provide nesting opportunities for birds, for the blossom to attract a range of invertebrates to its sweet nectar and for birds and mammals to feast on its voluptuous berries in high summer and autumn.

My favourite honeysuckle is our native one - lonicera pericylemenum - whose country name is woodbine. I'm not a purist and am nurturing a range of other kinds on the allotment. Overwintering blackcaps love the nutritious black berries of the l. halliana form during the winter.

And now the plants are beginning to fill with sticky red berries. Time for seed collection - so always carry plastic bags with you for this opportunity. Ignore the looks of passers by - my experience tells me they have a fear of making eye contact with anyone who furtively delves into hedgerows.


At home, separate the juicy flesh of the berries from the seeds and dry seeds on kitchen paper. Your fingers will suggest that you have a heavy smoking habit for a day but eventually the 'nicotine stains' will scrub off. Berries can sometimes contain half a dozen seeds. Each piece of kitchen paper will hold around 50 seeds.


When dry, place kitchen paper and its seeds onto tray of damp potting compost and lightly cover with more compost. Two pieces of kitchen towel will go onto a seed tray and so, with fantastic germination you could have a hundred seedlings. Place outside and keep watered.


After two weeks or so the seeds may be germinating and these can be placed in modules.



When plants are around 10 cm tall, plant out in hedgerows or at base of trees or grow them on in a nursery bed.

coneflowers

Flowers of high summer, coneflowers (echinacae) are loved by bumble bees especially. The flowers have this disinct shuttlecock appearance.

While honeybees flock to the borage, they pay little attention to the coneflowers.

Bumblebees, however, slowly crawl across the flower heads of the echinacae and remain in place for minutes.

Imagine the visual impact of a large group of these flowers. We have one plant on the allotment and will divide it late in the season, but I don't think Piet Oudolf should be concerned yet.

I've added a link to Piet's website under 'In the garden'.

our garden grows

My seemingly endless 'farewell tour' continued last week. Very tired.
But, the rejuvenating, restorative  powers of our 'garden to be' came to the rescue.

So, this morning I sowed seeds of golden oat grass (stipa gigantea) collected by Jen and pricked out more red campion (silene dioica) seedlings into modules. If successful, the stipa may go on to make impressive eruptions of ornamental grass, allowing the formal gardens to segue into the wild gardens. It is a tough plant used to the dry conditions of southern Spain. It should love our sandy site. The campion plugs will be planted in groups in the hedgerows and I will broadcast remaining seed in patches in the woodland later. The seed was collected locally and so it should thrive in our conditions.
I have yet to sow seed of white campion (silene alba) and bladder campion (silene vulgaris). I particularly like to see red and white campion flowering together and hope to achieve this attractive combination beneath hedges and in woodland.

This afternoon I sowed seeds of red astrantia collected from Rogers garden: these are always popular with bees. They like conditions beneath trees and prefer moist soils. I'm hoping that a good mulch will be enough to keep their roots happy.

On site the flora is disappointingly limited and much work will be needed over many years to create the kind of diversity we want to see. But a few plants may be of help and I spotted three isolated spikes of foxgloves (digitalis purpurea) amongst the concrete and ragged grass. That works out at one foxglove plant per two acres!!! But much more populous than our native bluebell (hyacinthoides non-scripta) of which I found one flowering plant on the entire site!!!

In my new life I rarely venture out without bags for seed collecting and picked off ripened red and white foxglove seed pods and placed seed in bags. A good shaking released plenty of seeds as the photo shows.  I scarified ground beneath the hedge and in the area cleared of nettles and bramble in the birch woodland to sprinkle seeds.

Our allotment is vibrant with foxgloves and we had brought a bagful of young plants for planting out too.

Add a couple of hours scything and a more rested Robert returned home, as ready for his final week as he can be.

William Robinson The Wild Garden

William Robinson wrote his influential 'The Wild Garden' in 1870. And 140 years later his ideas are as fresh and radical as they were then.

Last night I read his comment about privet (ligustrum officinalis) of which we have inherited several hundred yards:
'It is necessary to avoid bad fencing plants. The worst is the common privet, the ghost of what a fence plant should be'.
And how right he is!


Here's a homage to his ideas in our unruly and exuberant allotment.


In the photo, phacelia, borage, scabious, comfrey, calendula and foxgloves jostle together providing rich sources of pollen and nectar for bees and other insects.


These, in turn, provide food for creatures further up the food chain, like birds and bats.