Some months ago on this blog, I wrote a piece about Field Maple in which I said it was a useful ‘gardening for wildlife’ plant for various moth caterpillars and as part of a mixed native hedge, although it offered little in terms of its flowers, seeds or autumn colour.A reader pulled me up to say that the yellow leaf tones in autumn are really very attractive. And quite right too.It made me realise for the first time how much I’m a sucker for autumn reds. Only when a tree burns with colour does it seem to naturally stir my blood. So this autumn I pledged to take a bit more notice of the yellows around me and what they bring to the winter garden.So here (left) are the fabulous yellows of Field Maple in Anglesey Abbey gardens. And, right, the shimmer of Silver Birch I photographed in north Norfolk in the first week of November. And if I had chance I might have been able to take photos of plants such as Larch and Guelder Rose.Now all of this may seem pretty irrelevant to gardening for wildlife. But there’s a serious point there – gardening for wildlife does not need to be divorced from all the other things that make gardening so enjoyable, such as the thrill when things grow and the pleasure that comes just from how a garden looks.
Only when we show that gardening for wildlife can still be about all these things can we hope that more and more gardeners will take up the challenge.
If you want to drop by my RSPB wildlife gardening blog, it is updated every Friday, and I'd love to see you there - www.rspb.org.uk/community/blogs/hfw
I’ll let you know, it will be good to have your input and have a visitor that understands what I’m doing.
Build it and they will come.
Good on you, Wildlife Friendly. And if I can be rude enough to ask for an invite when you open, I'll be first through the door. Or rather 'back gate'!
We had an early, hard frost down here and the yellows were stunning, it was one of the most colourful autumns I can remember.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people still think gardening for wildlife means lots of weeds and an unkempt garden. I intend opening my garden for charity next year. Perhaps if people see that a garden doesn’t have to resemble a piece of wasteland and that flowers for insects can be beautiful too I might make some converts.