Volunteer Dirk, warden Ben and I spent most of yesterday giving the Strumpshaw Fen nectar garden a much-needed makeover. We created this little garden six years ago and it has been a great success, providing visitors with great views of swallowtails and showing what can be done in a small space to attract butterflies, bees and other insects. Over the years, some of the big perennials and certain wild plants that had moved in on their own (this is a nature reserve – we don’t like to call them weeds) had taken over and were smothering the other flowers. A few hours hard digging and the job was done. To make the garden even better we added a bee post. This is a recycled chestnut gate post with various sized holes drilled into it to provide homes for mason bees, leaf-cutters and other solitary bees. Solitary bee homes are an easy way to encourage these expert pollinators into your garden, and can cost next to nothing using bundles of hollow bamboo or by drilling holes into a log or piece of timber. Now is the time to do it – the days are getting longer and warmer and the first bees will be looking for nest sites within a few weeks.
Tim