Wildlife Garden July Update

With Lockdown easing in the wildlife garden we havebeen returning to our volunteer workdays only to be greeted by some very persistent perennial ‘flowers in the wrong place’, including Bristly Ox tongue and Ground Elder. Whilst tackling these will be an ongoing task, we are able to begin to enjoy our donated plant colourful harvest, with some huge beetroots, yellow and green courgettes, lettuce, rainbow chard and the odd chickpea… maybe not enough for the houmous we envisaged!

The wildlife pond has been slowly filling with plants after its makeover. Lilies and Irises are happily establishing themselves, whilst surface feeders at the moment include pond skaters and semaphore flies. We are excited so see how the pond is colonised and will continue to monitor it regularly to see who arrives to live under the surface. We are hoping to see Damsel flies, diving beetles and amphibians in particular.
The Meadow area has been very dry this season so far, despite the intermittent showers. This has meant that some of the early summer species have finished earlier and the late summer ones haven’t yet taken over. Even so there are still lots of nectar rich flowers providing lots of food for our visiting insects. It has been a fantastic year so far for butterfly spotting on warm days with lots of Peacocks, Red Admirals and Meadow Browns to see and Speckled Woods can be found in the sheltered areas if you know what you’re looking for. One of our young butterfly counting visitors managed to count 41 sightings on his orchard walk.