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.

Bee-friendly in November. White-tailed bumbles still very active,here on Salvia 'Phyllis Fancy'.3 other Salvias still in...
09/11/2025

Bee-friendly in November. White-tailed bumbles still very active,here on Salvia 'Phyllis Fancy'.3 other Salvias still in flower as well as Cosmos,Gaillardia and Gaura.

Good
25/10/2025

Good

Bee- friendly in October. Asters in full flower now with both White-tailed and Common Carder Bumblebees visiting. Generi...
10/10/2025

Bee- friendly in October. Asters in full flower now with both White-tailed and Common Carder Bumblebees visiting. Generic Michaelmas Daisy, small flowered Little Carlow and very purple Violetta.Also Devils-bit Scabious just going over.

Virginia creeper doing it 's autumn thing. Great for wildlife,always smothered in bees when in flower and have seen blac...
10/10/2025

Virginia creeper doing it 's autumn thing. Great for wildlife,always smothered in bees when in flower and have seen blackbirds,robins and blackcaps eating the berries.

Gardening on the Other Side of the Fence - no.27 (Eastry Village News Oct 2025.No sooner had I hit the ‘send’ button for...
05/10/2025

Gardening on the Other Side of the Fence - no.27 (Eastry Village News Oct 2025.
No sooner had I hit the ‘send’ button for the last article, mentioning how much of the country were imposing hosepipe bans, than we promptly had an extremely wet July with 146mm against a 30 yr average of 47.36mm. And then an extremely dry August with 13.5mm v the average 50.68mm.
But having visited Devon and Somerset they both missed any significant rain in the same period although not when we were there !
The results of this year’s Big Butterfly Count have just been released and were surprisingly disappointing but I had seen far more prior to the reporting period that they use. However I have identified 150 species of moth in the garden so far this year compared to a previous best of 131.
One new species of bird, Bullfinch, takes the garden list to 30 and last week there were a pair of Greenfinches, the first since autumn 2022.
One other new visitor is one that divides garden owners, whether you are wildlife-friendly or not. A single badger arrived in August. In my previous garden, in Surrey, we backed onto a railway line and there was a sett about 250 metres away and they used to visit to drink from the pond and pick up fallen fruit from a large wild cherry tree. But they did no other damage. However a neighbout 4 gardens down returned from hoilday and said he thought the England rugby team had held a training session on his lawn ! Here we are getting a fair bit of digging and rooting around in the wilder, orchard/meadow part of the garden but, so far, nothing more.
Because of the drier weather earlier in the year, the meadow hasn’t grown so much and there is noticeably less grass to deal with now we are cutting down one section at a time. The current trend in garden meadow management (as opposed to production for hay) is to leave some part of the meadow uncut through the winter to allow butterflies etc complete their life-cycles undisturbed.
I have mentioned the use of the word ‘Rewilding’ before related to gardening, but I am currently reading a book called ‘Renaturing’ (by James Canton,available from Kent Libraries) and I like the use of that term for the type of gardening that I am doing. Certainly some types of moth that have appeared use plants and shrubs that I have planted so the impact you can have can be seen. We have had a second old tree die this year, an old Morello cherry. But as before I will be leaving it in situ as it is still the most used perching area for all the small birds that pass through. Despite most of the info that Green Woodpeckers feed mostly on the ground looking for ants, there was one in this old tree last winter so hopefully it will return for some years to come as the tree continues to decay.

Jeff, the Bee-Friendly Gardener

Biodiversity friendly gardening. Following this post by Kew Gardens, I have also left one haystack from the last part of...
03/10/2025

Biodiversity friendly gardening. Following this post by Kew Gardens, I have also left one haystack from the last part of the meadow I have scythed this year. This section is the one left all year from last summer and the other pic is the section being left this winter.
I have stacked it on the hollow of the partially fallen cherry plum as from previous experience the stack almost killed off the grass, which you could resow or use as an opportunity to addmore wildflowers.
https://www.facebook.com/kewgardens/posts/hay-have-you-seen-our-new-addition-for-all-its-rustic-charm-the-haystack-is-a-wo/1207704271401124/

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.

Pollinator friendly Sunday
20/07/2025

Pollinator friendly Sunday

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