Talkback: Blood rain and butterflies

Singing Hedgehog

As ever with these things there is no single cause nor solution: loss of hedgerows, urban concretisation, jobsworth mowing of verges, nectarless perty plants in garden centres; a number of councils seem to be responding and either mowing in sympathy with insects or leaving areas to grow wild, campaigns such as those by BC and RHS are raising awareness of better choices of plants for gardeners.

[PS I have your booklet from BC and will be planting up a butterfly/bee bed over the next year.]

smflyman

After a mild if tempestuous Winter I saw several early flutterbys, but only the odd one of each species. It would appear that former 'abundant' numbers have in deed become things of the past. A Fritillary appeared in our garden (South Wales valley) - the first I have seen in 10 years - I cannot say if that means they are frequent elsewhere for me to see one here, but despite planting for insects I see relatively few.

Steve Morris

flowering rose

with the loss of front gardens and now the start of loss with back gardens ,its no wonder we are losing our wildlife.

Elusive

90% of the flowers I grow in my garden are for wildlife. I have a few pretty ones for myself but mostly I consider what is useful for wildlife before myself.

I get plenty of wildlife that visit me

Roy Hill

"The single droplet of meconium from each small tortoiseshell butterfly in my kitchen amounted to less than half a teaspoon."



How many of the 'each'?

gardengirl4

I don't really understand why buddleja davidii should be wildlife friendly. On the continent buddleja ist listet as invasive species. The problem is, that the flowers attract butterflies, but the caterpillars can't feed on the leaves. Like this the caterpillars starve. And because buddlejas are so robust and hardy they self-seed everywhere and take the place of those plants that are really valuable for butterflies