"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead, American anthropologist, 1901-1978
Chris Packham and a team of wildlife experts spent a year exploring every inch of a series of back gardens in Welwyn Garden City. The gardens are all interlinked, and Packham and the team want to find out how much wildlife lives beyond our back doors, and how good is wildlife for the British garden?
Amongst other things, Chris meets a family of foxes and a ball of frisky frogs.
By the end of the year, Chris will find out how well our gardens support wildlife and how many different species call our gardens home.
A team from London’s Natural History Museum are among those who are involved in the programme.
Good news for those of you who don’t like mowing your lawn and would love a really good reason not to bother.
Well, mowing the lawn could attract 10 x the number of bees that you would usually get!
Give bees a Super Lawn!
Lawns cut every four weeks are being called “super lawns” and it’s reckoned that they attract 4,000 bees a day on average.
However, those cut regularly to keep them neat and tidy bring in just an average of 400 bees a day.
This is a HUGE difference.
Take part in a citizen science project: Every Flower Counts!
This has all been worked out by charity Plantlife. They’ve got an Every Flower Counts survey. Nearly 2,000 households were asked how often they mow their lawns; and then they were asked to count the number of wild flowers in one squared patches.
Daisies were most abundant on lawns, followed by white clover and the violet coloured selfheal.
Asking those surveyed to count 24 different wildflowers, Plantlife could work out how much nectar the whole garden produced – and how many bees that could support.
And that’s where they discovered that one in five lawns called super lawns would entice ten times more bees.
Let your lawn grow
So Plantlife advise that we keep sections of our lawn long so that we can support wild flowers such as oxeye daisy, field scabious, knapweed and even orchids. Daisies and white clover are short stemmed wild plants – they produce more flowers if cut back once a month.
So some parts of your lawn should have a monthly cut to boost short plants. And we should all put aside an area for longer grass – what Plantlife call a Mohican haircut!
Bees and butterflies need different sorts of flowers. Combine them, and the lawns in the survey produced 50lb of nectar a day – and that’s enough to support over 2 million honeybees.
Count your flowers and report in
So our task is to work out which parts of the lawn to short cut, which to leave long, and then to put the kettle on and settle down with a cuppa and listen to the birdsong!
And one final thing to do....
Count the flowers on your lawn and find out how many bees it can support! The more flowers in your lawn, and the more types of flowers you've got, the more bees you'll be able to support.
Every Flower Counts takes palce from 23rd to 31st May 2020 so let Plantlife know your results!
From your results, Plantlife can calculate a National Nectar Index to show how lawns in Britain are helping to feed pollinators. And they'll show you how you can increase the number of flowers in your lawn!
Sometimes you see something on the internet or on television that really hits you hard and makes a point extremely well.
I saw this video, this afternoon, and I wanted to share it with you. Please share it with everyone you can.
The ultimate message is that we SHARE this planet. It demonstrates how dominant the human race has become - and how selfish. I am not going to tell you anymore about it - please just watch it for yourself. Here it is:
If I’m driving along in my car, I always find the wildlife flowers on our verges to be very uplifting to see.
And whilst I’ve been having my daily one walk during the lockdown because of the coronavirus, I’ve really enjoyed seeing all the wild flowers which are about.
Plantlife is a charity that works nationally and internationally to raise the profile of our wild flowers, plants and our fungi. They support our wildlife and they are vital. Their colour and character give us cheer and brighten up our day and journeys.
It’s really important to protect our wild flowers, our plants and our fungi. And our roadsides have been much quieter of late, as lockdown is observed. The drone of many councils’ mowers have also fall silent as councils may have reduced grass cutting down to the minimum required to maintain visibility and make sure our roads are safe.
Plantlife hope that reduced cutting frequencies may help verge wildflowers to grow, flower and set seed. Flowers such as the white campion, betony, greater knapweed and harebell, the chance to grow, flower and set seed.
The good news is that a more wildlife-friendly management regime will help tackle climate change.
Over 300 local authorities have now declared a climate emergency. Reducing their cutting regimes, as recommended in Plantlife’s management guidelines, will also help councils bring down carbon emissions.
Hopefully it won’t be long before we can all get outside and enjoy the wild flowers along our roadside. Meantime, please visit Plantlife’s website to see how you can support their “Support the road verge campaign.”
However, gardens have an important top play in providing havens for wildlife – in giving them food and shelter.
The more wildlife friendly we can make our gardens, the better a chance wildlife will have.
There’s plenty we can all do to help, such as making a feeding station for hedgehogs – we’ve put a hedgehog hotel in our garden. You can build a small pond for amphibians, or create a log pile for insects. Pretty much all the flowers in our garden are wildlife friendly and it gives us huge pleasure to watch the wildlife enjoying them.
It’s easy to do.
And the good news is that PTES have put a kit together to help you make your garden more wildlife friendly!
All you need to do is to donate £5 and you can receive your special Wildlife Friendly Garden Kit, with everything you need to turn your garden into a wildlife haven.
Kits include:
garden wildlife guide on the importance of your garden to wildlife and the species you’re likely to see.
garden wildlife planner of monthly wildlife friendly activities all year round.
garden wildlife poster with 12 top tips to make your garden more wildlife-friendly.
PTES supporter booklet introducing PTES and their vital conservation work.
