Nature Chain Winsley

  1 June                  Good Flowers and Good Water All that glitters isn’t gold... or is it? A rapid instant spread of a young vigorous plant into a riot of joyous vivid golden; a mass of beautiful peachy petals; cool water gushing out of a shady rock cleft down  a hill. A small marigold plant with closed green buds  outside a local supermarket enticed me...  I had been looking for traditional Pot Marigold. I should have noticed its thicker lusher green leaves. A fortnight of warmth and it transformed into a mat of golden petals. Maybe a gardener’s visual delight, BUT a ‘monster’ in disguise – a polyploid.  Instead of central mini tube flowers with pollen and seed potential there were flamboyant petals. No food for insects. Genetically modified by chemicals to have four sets of chromosomes this marigold ticks priorities of flower size, flower number, thicker leaves, resilience to extreme  conditions and bigger...

  18 May   Unlikely Connections Wildlife Gardening Tips in Italics   What do they have in common? Bee in Hi-Vis kit! ( 1 ) and a May Buttercup meadow ( 2 )? Two fledgling Long-tailed Tits - ‘fluff balls’ - high up on a branch, ( 3 ) and tiny spiders ( 4 )? Some might guess that one is the irresistible, ‘adorable’ garden visitor  and the other  the repugnant, even frightening and unwanted intruder to be annihilated. And add to that mix, small flies ( 5 ), an extra spider with longer legs ( 6 ), a lurid greenish crab spider with legs ready to grab ( 7 ), then white fly ( 8 ) and the horror reality show would be total!   But for the ‘fluff balls’ this creature show is a typical breakfast of multi nutritional delights .  Add in some insect eggs and moth ( 9 ) caterpillars and the meal is ideal with both moth larvae and insect eggs as key components for growing fledglings.   Wildlife Gardening Tips They find all these, and the gardeners’ drea...

  4 th  MAY       Plant a Holly, Plant a Butterfly Shrub!   Plant a butterfly food shrub and it creates a whole new world for others you hadn’t thought of... it all connects like a secret jigsaw. Little flutters of blue had been darting in gardens, car parks and roadsides - Holly Blue butterflies have been abundant during  the last few weeks. Holly is the food of their Spring broods of caterpillars, while in the Summer they choose Dogwoods and Spindle tree. Plant Dogwoods and you have the choice of glorious stem colours – green, near black, and here red for Winter in Photo  2   which picks up pink of Cyclamen as the bush grows and expands to create a mini woodland habitat. On the ground, Lungwort (Pulmonaria) and Hellebores chime pink as well, also Honesty and Welsh poppies ( 3 ).    When warm weather arrives ( 4 ), there are pink hardy geraniums. All of these readily self-seed from a single initial plant... and behold, you have be...