Untitled

A little while ago I was involved in a great whoha about wildflower seeds. Plantlife, the wildflower charity, essentially said all wildflower seed mixes were cr@p and should be avoided. OK, perhaps it was a slightly more nuanced message, but you get the idea! The idea underlying this was to get people to be more sensitive to their local botany, and that trying to replace lost wildflower areas…

Farming With Wildlife in Mind

Farming With Wildlife in Mind

This weekend the Times recommended Isabella Tree’s excellent Wilding as one of its books of the year. It “forces us to rethink farming”. More accurately, it forces us to rethink not farming. For those not in the know, Wildingis about the Knepp Estate. The estate is really poor quality farmland (grade 3 and 4), which has been in the Burrell family for generations.…

Foodplants for Butterflies and Moths

What would you think about if I asked you for good foodplants for butterflies and moths? Buddleja? Verbena bonariensis? Hebe? It’s true – they’re all great nectaring plants, and non-native to the UK. So why should I bother with native plants if I want to encourage butterflies and moths?

Well, many native plants are very good sources of nectar, of course. Hemp agrimony, knapweed, wild marjoram and…

Why Hedgelaying Makes a Better Hedge

Hedgelaying now seems hopelessly quaint. It’s incredible to think that there would have been thousands of agricultural workers spending months and months painstakingly managing hedges with slashers and axes. The time it took is mind boggling. This sweet video from 1942 would have been completely unremarkable – I guess the landgirl would have seemed the most unusual thing about it!

Each area had…