Bee Friendly Gardener

Bee Friendly Gardener All your regular garden maintenance requirements carried out by a wildlife and environment conscious gardener. Established in 2003. Based nr Sandwich in Kent.

Please message or mail me as I am unable to take phone calls during my working hours.

20/09/2025

The RHS have recently updated their Plants for Pollinators lists. Check out their website for the latest research.

Latest new pollinator-friendly bed cleared and planted : Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium caerulea) x19; Digitalis ferruginea ...
19/09/2025

Latest new pollinator-friendly bed cleared and planted : Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium caerulea) x19; Digitalis ferruginea and Digitalis lanata 'Cafe Creme' X23 plus our native Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea). All grown from seed. This is the last main bed in the formal part of garden which was until June overshadowed by some large,neighbouring Leylandii. Now much more light coming in to this east-facing border.

More pollinator friendly plants in flower right now in my Eastry garden
04/08/2025

More pollinator friendly plants in flower right now in my Eastry garden

01/08/2025

Gardening on the other side of the fence – no.26 (Eastry Village News- August 2025. NB. This was submitted before the VERY heavy July rains.

So, at last, we have a good year for insects. After lots of doom and gloom and two cold springs this year’s warm weather has seen a resurgence in numbers. Ladybirds halting the test match cricket, a butterfly causing a double-fault at Wimbledon and aphids plastering the windshields at the Le Mans 24 hours have been in the news. Not since a moth sat on Cristiano Ronaldo’s eyelid some years ago have insects and sport collided in such a high profile.
Here in Eastry, butterflies are around in good numbers, especially the whites which have been augmented by an invasion from the continent. (You can make your own topical comments). But wait, the older readers amongst you will say. There aren’t anything like the amount when we were younger. And you are right. Scientists call it ‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’ - where each generation get used to whar they see about them and then accepts that as the norm. By many accounts, for every butterfly you see now, there would have been a 100 in the 1950’s. And in recent years, you genuinely are only seeing one butterfly at a time. Their decline has never received the coverage that bees do. I would suggest that is because butterflies are seen as a nice thing to have whereas bees can be given a financial benefit to humanity for all the crop pollination they carry out. Look out for the Big Butterfly Count which takes place between July 18th and August 10th this year.
In my own garden, last week produced the biggest catch in my moth trap that I have had since starting in Surrey in 2015, and there have been record numbers of several species over the last couple of sessions. And a new flower bed that I created last autumn in which I have crammed 27 Verbena bonariensis plants in a 2m x 1m wedge has been absolutely alive with butterflies and the most Hummingbird Hawk-Moths I have ever seen. The next three most popular plants are Parsley which I grow to let flower each year, a purple Marjoram and the wildflower, St. Johns Wort which all attract an extremely diverse range of the smaller bees as well as numerous other pollinators. Have a look at the website of Rosybees.com if you would like to see the results of a long trial carried out by this nurserywoman of the most attractive plants. I have also been pleased to finally see grasshoppers in my meadow. They have been, annoyingly, present in some nearby gardens on normal lawns in which I work but had been absent until this year.
I know some of you aren’t on Facebook but I have been collecting rainfall data since September 2022 and have been posting monthly results on the Eastry Community page. The storm on June 12/13th which produced 48mm was the most in any 24 hr period since I began and higher than the monthly average for any June between 1991-2020.

Biodiversity friendly gardening : here are a couple of habitat planters I have done utilising old milk crates,some small...
30/07/2025

Biodiversity friendly gardening : here are a couple of habitat planters I have done utilising old milk crates,some small-gauge wire mesh and just stones from various garden jobs. Lots of nooks and crannies for beetles,centipedes and a whole host of mini-beasts. One has a top dividing layer with very gritty old compost for the Sedum and the other has sunken pots for 3 varieties of thyme.

Pollinator friendly Sunday
20/07/2025

Pollinator friendly Sunday

Developing a customer's redundant veg bed into a pollinator-friendly one.
10/07/2025

Developing a customer's
redundant veg bed into a pollinator-friendly one.

Here are a couple of close-ups showing our small solitary bees nesting habits. The tubes are, in this case, hollow plant...
03/07/2025

Here are a couple of close-ups showing our small solitary bees nesting habits. The tubes are, in this case, hollow plant stems of varying diameters. I use dried dried reeds or iris stems for the smaller ones. The one the bee is entering is about 5mm and the sealed one below is only 3mm. Different bees will use a mixture of saliva, plant sap or tree resin to seal up their nests and use tiny pieces of grit or brick dust to camouflage them. Even tiny woodworm holes are used by the smallest bees, those that you might think are small flies but are actually some of the 250 types of these bees. Some of you will be familiar with the type of bee "hotels" sold in garden centres. These tend to have larger diameter tubes and are most likely to be used by mason bees which use wet mud to seal their nests of leafcutter bees which use pieces of leaves that they cut and collect.

Latest shot of new pollinator bed. Verbena bonariensis and tall Scabious both in full bloom.
01/07/2025

Latest shot of new pollinator bed. Verbena bonariensis and tall Scabious both in full bloom.

Finally had the opportunity to visit the one and only John Little's amazingly innovative Hilldrop garden in Essex earlie...
21/06/2025

Finally had the opportunity to visit the one and only John Little's amazingly innovative Hilldrop garden in Essex earlier today. His garden is dedicated to increasing biodiversity by the use of a variety of substrates from the waste industry, including crushed brick,concrete and ceramics. Extensive use of sand and deadwood and and very little flat surfaces mean that a wide variety of solitary bees use the site This garden has inspired recent work in some Chelsea show gardens and the Knepp estate's Wild Garden. Much of the hard landscaping are prototypes of items that his company makes and installs in public venues.
John is now overseeing a new charity called Care Not Capital hoping to inspire the use of gardeners in public spaces rather than expensive projects that never get maintained after their initial heralded installation.

And a couple more from my garden : Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' and the scabious-like Cephalaria gigantea.
15/06/2025

And a couple more from my garden : Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' and the scabious-like Cephalaria gigantea.

Address

Leatherhead

Telephone

07792-086385

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Bee Friendly Gardener posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Bee Friendly Gardener:

Shortcuts

Share