Dore to Door internet edition

Environment - Autumn 2000

Plight of the Bumblebee - The Wildlife Garden - Stanage Forum - If only I'd had my camera!

Plight of the Bumblebee

Bumblebee populations which are essential for pollinating garden and crop plants have been in decline for many years. At least five of the 16 bee species that were present in 1970 are threatened with extinction according to recent research carried out by the Bumblebee Working Group (part of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan).

Changes in farming practice which have led to the loss of many wild flower meadows, in particular those rich in Trolium pratense (red clover), are blamed for this problem.

The Bumblebee Working Group undertook the study with the help of Gale's Honey. The aim is to reverse the decline of UK species of bumblebee. Help from Gale's and Cotswold Seeds has been obtained to target gardeners, who can encourage bumblebees by sowing a special seed mixture with native grass species and nectar-rich wild flowers, including red clover.
Research by Sally Corbett from the University of Cambridge Botanic Gardens into the value of cultivated flowers to bumblebees suggests that plant breeders may be partly to blame for the decline. She says that newer cultivars are often much less useful to bumblebees than the species from which they are derived. Sally recommends that concerned gardeners should avoid both double and spurless flowers, and grow more species or old-fashioned cultivars.

The Wildlife Garden

'I like wildlife, as long as it is in someone else's garden'. Strange though it may sound, I have often heard this phrase uttered not by the people you might expect - those who have just a passing interest in wildlife, but by enthusiastic naturalists. However, they were also keen gardeners and for them, encouraging wildlife could lead to all sorts of conflicts with their tidy garden ethos.
Take for example, something as unassuming as a teasel. The seed heads of this spiny plant may well draw charms of goldfinches into the autumn garden, - surely a delight to any bird-watcher, but as the birds feed, the seeds invariably get scattered around and the following spring, a sea of young teasels emerge. In a well-regimented plot, such opportunistic 'weeds' are definitely not welcome.

This is why in many tidy gardens, seed heads are usually removed as soon as the plant has finished flowering, before it can scatter its progeny. This of course means that with no seed heads to feed on, the birds will have to search for food in other gardens. Could the answer to this dilemma be for 'tidy-minded' gardeners to have a small, separate wild patch; a place where teasels and other wild plants can grow in Arcadian profusion and where wildlife will be left undisturbed, but separate to the rest of the garden?

One novel approach to this problem was demonstrated by the Wildlife Trust's show garden at the BBC's Gardeners' World Live Event 2000 in Birmingham. Here, instead of having one separate wild patch, the small raised beds of a more conventional plot were transformed into wildlife havens - a mini meadow, a marshy area and even a small pond. How effective such a design would be in reality is open to question, as we know very little about how the size of a wild plot influences its wildlife visitors.

In the show garden, they chose to grow and maintain all their plants organically, but what happens if only part of the garden is treated in a wildlife-friendly manner? You can see this problem demonstrated most readily at allotments. I have seen a plot where the owners have created a pond to encourage frogs and other wildlife and grew their plants organically, only to find their adjacent neighbour using just about every herbicide and insecticide available; it may as well have been a pesticide-testing ground as so many sprays were used. What the influence is of one plot on another is anybody's guess, but I am sure you can imagine which plot the wildlife would favour and what would happen to them once they strayed outside their sanctuary.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that by creating such an area, you not only encourage birds, beneficial insects and hedgehogs, but invariably other less welcome visitors and you can be quite sure that these pests won't be content to stay within the confines of the wild patch.

So, are there ways we can control them without resorting to sprays?
With any pest control programme, the first step is to keep checking the plants and take action at the first signs of attack. Sometimes pests, such as frog-hoppers on lavenders, can easily be removed by picking off individual insects or by using a strong directed water spray. Sparrows will do this job very efficiently, but like all biological controls, this can be a hit or miss affair.

Take for example a method gaining popularity in America, where batches of commercially bred predators, such as lacewings or ladybirds, are released into the garden. I tried this by collecting ladybirds which had just come out of hibernation, having spent the winter in my garden shed and transferring them onto a number of aphid-infested plants. Unfortunately, it was spring and the ladybirds obviously had other things on their minds when they were in close proximity to one another, which certainly wasn't champing their way through aphids...Even when they became less engrossed in other ladybirds, many simply went their own way, but thankfully, enough did remain in my garden to make an impact on the pest numbers.

From my experience, commercially produced insect predators or parasites are best used inside the house or greenhouse, where you can carefully control variables, such as temperature, to ensure you get the maximum benefit from them. In a garden, it is difficult to guarantee the perfect conditions for ladybirds or in fact any other predators, and even harder to predict just how many of these insects, once released, will stay and eat your pests. I suspect that if you liberated large numbers of lacewings, they would simply be caught by birds to feed their nestlings, which is perhaps not quite the reason you bought the lacewings for.

In a wildlife garden, we have to accommodate both the welcome and less desirable visitors, because without for instance aphids and caterpillars, there is no food for growing blue tit chicks. What we are trying to achieve is a balance between pests and predators, and although this may sound easy enough to do, unlike the gardens of 'make over TV programmes', nothing will create an instant and balanced wildlife garden: it takes time and considerable effort.
However, there is another wildlife friendly technique you may decide to use to deter garden pests: companion planting. Here, certain plants are grown to repel pests, for example sage, which is often recommended to keep whitefly off cabbages. This probably sounds like the lazy gardener's dream, but there is accumulating evidence to show that some of these combinations do actually work.

The best documented ones include various Artemisia species, which keep pests off tomatoes and French marigolds, that destroy soil living nematodes. From my own experience, summer savory is worth planting alongside your broad beans to repel blackfly; nasturtiums (but not the rampant ones) grown amongst cabbages to control whitefly and Mexican marigold, (Tagetes minuta), to suppress couch grass, although it is also supposed to control ground elder and bindweed as well. Wouldn't it be interesting if this could also control that most pernicious of modern problem plants - the Japanese Knotweed? Other gardeners have reported that growing garlic amongst their bedding plants has made them greenfly and whitefly-free. There are many other combinations recommended in the various books on companion planting, some of which may well be worth trying, but many probably have little effect.

Science will no doubt unravel which companion planting combinations work and which don't, but as pests are becoming more and more resistant to chemical pesticides, whether we like it or not, we could well have to resort more and more to such seemingly esoteric techniques.

Jack Daw
Stop Press

From a recent press release; (CJ Wildbird Foods Ltd. 19 July). Due to poor weather conditions in the major peanut growing areas, there is concern that peanuts contaminated with the potentially lethal aflatoxin fungi may be sold for bird consumption. To avoid this, it is recommended that you only buy peanuts that have a UK test certificate, proving they are uncontaminated.

More about feeding birds in the next issue.

Stanage Forum

We are fortunate to live in an area overflowing with marvelous scenery, but Stanage Edge must be one of the most dramatic features of the Peak District. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come each year to enjoy its natural beauty and it is recognised as one of the best climbing crags in the UK, attracting people from all over the world. People also come to walk, cycle, hang glide, horse ride, bird-watch or simply to enjoy the views.

The area is also internationally important for wildlife. There are a whole range of habitats from flower-rich pastures and hay meadows to woodlands, crags and boulder slopes. The moorland and raised bog of White Path Moss, above Stanage Edge, is of particular importance. It supports as dense a breeding population of rare wetland birds as anywhere else in the U.K. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Protection Area. There is also a working farm, managed by Broomfield College, and a number of important archaeological features.

The area is owned by the Peak District National Park Authority, who are seeking to demonstrate how to conserve and enhance the area's special qualities; to provide opportunities for their enjoyment and understanding and to improve the quality of life for the people who live, work and visit.

To this end the PDNPA are organising a forum for all those who are interested in or affected by changes at Stanage. The PDNPA feel that many people care passionately about the area and can help them to manage it better. There will be a series of open meetings, starting this summer on 23 August at the Memorial Hall, Hathersage, to develop a new ten-year management plan, working towards a shared vision for the North Lees Estate and Stanage Edge.

To find out more, look out for press releases or on the PDNPA web-site www.peakdistrict.org.uk, or contact Matthew Croney on 01629 816351 (or E-mail: mc@peakdistric.org) to go on the mailing list.