Do you find that, at any given point in the year, there's a plant that is most definitely flavour of the moment in your garden? It's the place that you know you can guarantee you will go out and see some kind of wildlife action.
Well, this is mine at the moment - lavender. Or more specifically, English Lavender Lavandula angustifolia. My five plants are of one of the larger cultivars, now about four years old, and with the flowering stems about three foot high with a hundred or so stems to each plant.
The flowers of lavender are hardly scene-stealers in terms of showiness. But en masse they are a lovely haze of pastel colour, And it is the sheer number of them that helps them work wonders for wildlife. They are the main source of nectar for Honeybees in my garden at the moment, and are doing wonders for bumblebees and hoverflies too. And they are a guranteed stop off for any passing white butterfly, be it Large, Green-veined or - as in my photo from the weekend - Small (this is a second brood male, with smaller paler-grey wing-tips than a Large White, and just one little black dot on his upper forewing).
It is the lavender too that last weekend played host to only the second and third Common Blue butterflies I've seen in my garden.
And then last night, it was the turn of a Hummingbird Hawkmoth to visit. It only hung in front of each flower for a moment - clearly the nectar well in each flower isn't huge - before nipping on to the next. But with so many flowers to choose from, it was busy for ten minutes or so.
And I must admit I have a little sniff at the foliage each time I pass - yes, I get my pleasure from lavenders in many a way!
Really interesting to hear both of your 'plants of the week', thanks. Lamb's ear I've had plenty of bumblebees on, plus Wool Carder Bee, but never that many butterflies - any ideas what species, Dorothy.
And Polygonum amplexicaule is a real surprise - I'd written it off for anything but hoverflies.
My sparrows are doing the same. The fledglings are sitting on a pile of millet seeds and the parents are posting them in one at a time, it’s comical to watch.
I have a plant which has surprised me this year, it’s Polygonum amplexicaule (Knotweed). I had a clump growing in part shade which needed splitting, I left half where it was and moved the other half to a sunny border. The clump in the sun is plastered in bees, butterflies, hoverflies and wasps; the clump in semi-shade has attracted nothing.
My garden plant of the week is Lambs ear or stachys lanata , i have never seen so many bees and butterflies as on this , Helenium comes a close 2nd
Also you mentioned house sparrows previously , and i am overrun with them this year 30 odd all winter and most of these have had at least 2 broods , some still in the nest this late in august. They have nested under the eaves of the house in 2 places, in the beech hedge. in the laurestinus and in the cotoniaster .
The adults bring the young in to my bird table , sit on it and are fed there in situ, talk about clever parenting