Planting for pollinators
4 ways to grow a flowery mini-meadow and help save wildlife- no space too small
When did you last see a butterfly? I don’t mean a cabbage white laying eggs on your brassicas. I mean a brimstone, small tortoiseshell, peacock or comma. Did you see more than one? Are you lucky enough to still see crowds of butterflies on buddleia in late summer? How long is it since wasps gatecrashed your picnic? When did bumblebees last nest in your garden? Would you know a woolly bear caterpillar if one wriggled under your nose? And have you ever seen a thick-legged flower beetle?
Thick-legged flower beetles are a beautiful iridescent green, and no bigger than the central boss of a strawberry flower. The male has wonderful swollen legs, like he’s wearing pantaloons. They eat pollen from single, open flowers and lay eggs inside flower stems.
The woolly bear caterpillar is a pollinator too. Or at least its adult form is – the garden tiger moth. Once widespread across the British Isles, it has declined by some 94 per cent in the south east, with slightly less horrific (but no less worrying) declines elsewhere in the country.
Quietly vanishing
All of these are pollinators. All are beautiful, most are treasured (I know it’s hard to love wasps, but do try), and all play a vital role in the pollination of our flowers and crops. Yet they’re in trouble. For 15 years – half the time this magazine has been in print – I’ve been writing about pollinator declines. The how, the why, the what we can do about it. Over and over. Yet still their numbers tumble. Our precious insects are quietly disappearing while most of us are too busy to notice.
Is it really that bad? Well, yes. Three of our 27 bumblebee species have become extinct since the Industrial Revolution. Two of the remaining 24 are highly endangered, another six are rare. The picture is equally bleak for butterflies, with 76 per cent of UK species declining in abundance or occurrence (or both) over the past 40 years. Moth numbers are falling too, down by nearly 30 per cent since the late 1960s (worse in the south east). Hoverflies haven’t been studied much, but a 2019 report suggests their numbers decreased by a third between 1980 and 2013.
Does it matter if species become extinct, if we don’t really notice? Does any extinction matter? We think it does. In this, our 30th anniversary issue, we’re launching our Put Pollinators First campaign, which will span seven months. We’ve set up a ‘pollination super panel’ of eminent scientists and bee experts who will share the latest thinking about how gardeners can help. We’re giving every magazine reader one or more packs of pollinator-friendly seeds, so you can grow more plants for pollinators and, we hope, learn more about these pollinators in the process.
We want you to help reverse pollinator declines, garden by garden. We’d like our 60th anniversary issue to be a celebration of what we brought back. We want you all to know and love the thick-legged flower beetle, have butterflies galore on your buddleia and bumblebees nesting under your shed. It’s not hard to help these precious insects, we just need to provide food and a home for them in our gardens, by growing accessible flowers and caterpillar foodplants and leaving messy corners for insects to shelter in. By mowing the lawn less often, not using pesticides and reinstating open compost heaps at the end of the garden. By sharing plants and teaching young family members why this matters. Let us show you how, and then make a pledge to support pollinators – which one thing will you do to save them?
We need to provide food and a home for these precious insects in our gardens