Bee Garden

My meadow in front of the hives is coming along at the moment, with my bees the old soaks spoiling themselves rotten! There has been lots of cheering feedback from visitors to the garden and a huge amount of wildlife on the scene, ranging from common frogs to Small Tortoiseshell caterpillars. This site deliberately points toward the morning sun, as the bee books recommend this for positioning hives (I think to encourage the bees to get out of bed and get busy, lazy swines). Well a consequence of this is that the mornings here have become a real haven for all the good insects we see about, particularly the butterflies who generally do their feeding ack emma! All the butterfly species recorded about the garden have also been spotted feeding here too at some point, including some of the Peacocks we released recently. Plans for next year are already afoot, with biennals germinated in trays for planting out in the autumn after the whole thing is chopped down.

Vipers Bugloss, our only native Echium species and a real insect magnet!

I dug up ten large Thistles from the adjacent farm field and transplanted them to a place where they can be appreciated

Phacelia tanacetifolia, this is often grown as a green manure but is also extremely attractive to bumblebees

Another of these panoramas giving a wider view