It’s been a very unusual couple of weeks for me and my garden. We’ve had quite a few visitors, some for charitable causes and others to listen to me explain how I manage (very loosely!) my rewilding, nature driven garden.
It seemed only polite to spruce the place up for guests, as I would the house, but as I fretted about potential twisted ankles on uneven steps, bramble scratches and nettle stings, my garden carried on oblivious to the fuss. In just two weeks, the single flowered, pollen beetle friendly roses went over but in recompense the Buddleja, beloved by honey bees, began to bloom.
The nettle leaved bellflower, a beautiful hedge bottom native, drooped and turned disappointingly brown, but the purple loosestrife’s attention grabbing vivid cerise flowers suddenly began to open and towered above the pond, while the delicate fluffy meadowsweet flowers remained like cream candyfloss cones around the margins and my meadow lawn became a haze of dancing wild carrot flowers.
The first visitors saw very little wildlife as the July weather imitated mid November with leaden skies and heavy rain and all my garden’s wild residents stayed in bed for the day. The second set were treated to perfect weather for walking around outside, not too hot and too cold, but too cloudy for many insects to be visibly active. The third group were professional designers and gardeners, so much more interested in what was growing than the wildlife it satisfies; but today as I sit in the shade sheltering from the now fierce heat of the sun, the insects have decided that the weather is much more to their liking and are putting in an appearance just for me.
There are meadow brown, ringlet, gatekeeper, red admiral, comma and both large and small white butterflies, honey, bumble, carder and solitary bees in several sizes, green, black and brown beetles whose names I don’t know, several types of hover fly and a grasshopper jumped up out of the long grass onto my shoulder to surprise me and make sure I knew he was there.
I enjoyed sharing my wild garden with human visitors, although I do wish the insect residents had been more noticeable for them. But that’s the thing about nature, it doesn’t work to our well planned timetable of events, it responds only to nature’s.
Perhaps the most important aspect of a wild garden is for the gardener to have more patience!
