We’re getting towards the end of our house build, thank goodness. Having moved into the new house – yet to be finished – we had to demolish the old cottage. The dust and mess is indescribable, which explains the lack of recent blogs. It’s like living in a bombsite with painters, and the dust is so bad I should be sitting here with an umbrella.

Anyway, demolishing the old cottage was interesting. I had no love for it. In many ways it came to represent all the reasons we were having to build a new house; it was dark, damp, cold and Jerry built. It drank oil, and had leaky plumbing and drains. The loos didn’t work properly and there was a toad living in the sitting room (escorted out of his home before it came crashing down around his ears). I guess the orginal cottage was pre WW1 but most of the buildings were less than twenty years old, and the difference between them and what we’ve built is night and day.

What was interesting about knocking old Hookgate cottage down was that there was an oddly moving moment when it stopped being a house and started being a half derelict building. I’m not sure exactly when it was, but it was rather moving to suddenly see it as a lifeless empty shell. Reading the State of Nature report I wondered whether we might not be staring at a similar process on a grand scale. Perhaps the UK is turning into a lifeless empty shell. The difference, of course, is that it’s relatively easy to build a new house and not impossible to build a much better one.

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Thanks to Caring for God’s Acre I had a lovely trip to Wales this week. Caring for God’s Acre is a charity promoting sensitive and helpful ways of looking after burial grounds, which includes establishing and managing wildflower meadow areas. This is where I came in; they very kindly asked me to give a short spiel at their conference at the National Botanical Gardens on getting meadow areas started. The quality of the (other!) speakers was excellent, and the first point of writing this blog is to recommend Caring for God’s Acre as a hugely well organized and impressive organization, punching way over their weight. Burial grounds are an important ecological as much as an under-used community resource, and Caring for God’s Acre seem up to the task of sorting that out.

Anyway, it gave me a great excuse to saunter over the border and visit a couple of my favourite suppliers en route, as well as enjoy an overnighter in Llandeilo. First stop was saxophone playing head nurseryman Lew in the Gower. Lew knows his business. He’s the kind of bloke you might expect to find shooting arrows at the French or playing hooker for Llanelli, but in actuality he knows everything there is to know about British aquatic plants. Cool, as he’d say.

Next stop was to the equally remarkable John Shipton of Shipton Bulbs. John is the son of an explorer and a great wanderer himself, but in between trips to exotic locations he grows native woodland plants with his daughter Astra on his beautiful smallholding in Carmarthenshire. This is a remote part of the realm as far from my experience as it is outside my Satnav’s! The puckish John looked like a woodland sprite in the gathering evening gloom.

Thence to Frontas in Llandeilo, and after a sound sleep a sumptuous full cooked. From Llandeilo a short hop and a skip to the National Botanical Gardens, which were an unexpected delight. Why on earth hadn’t I heard of them? Glasshouses, walled gardens, bee gardens, bog gardens, wild gardens, Japanese gardens, apothecaries’ gardens, boulder gardens, sculpture gardens, wild gardens… the plants were breath-taking.
And in the middle of all this was the Caring for God’s Acre conference. Sometimes I love my job.

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Photo: Peter Eeles

I particularly like them because of their relationship with Buckthorn. Brimstone butterflies’ larvae feed exclusively off our native Alder Buckthorn and Purging Buckthorn, Rhamnus frangula and Rhamnus cathartica. If you grow them, as we’re doing, chances are you’ll find Brimstones moving in sooner rather than later. They stay for successive generations, year after year. Buckthorn is critical for Brimstone butterflies’ survival.

There are many other similar exclusive relationships between our native flora and fauna. Insects don’t just need flowers to provide nectar and pollen; they often have other demands on them too. These mean it’s easy to play God. If you want Brimstone butterflies, plant Buckthorn. Small Blues? Kidney Vetch. I love the sort of immediate cause and effect you can get in your garden.

Buckthorn is a nice easy-to-grow native shrub anyway. We’re growing Alder Buckthorn here, as it copes so well with our waterlogged clay. Purging Buckthorn is more of a chalky soil lover, so wherever you are, you can give Buckthorn a try!

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The bees and pesticides argument rages on. I won’t bore you with the minutiae of the current debate on neonicotinoids, but let’s just say the quality of it leaves something to be desired. There’s much bloody mindedness, politics, mudslinging and finger pointing going on. I’m pleased it has highlighted the decline in bee populations though, which seem to me to be the canary in the coal mine. A ban on neonicotinoids would of course be helpful, but I’m increasingly concerned that folk see this as an instant panacea. Once this single and high profile issue is sorted out – as I hope it will be – then will all be well again? I’m afraid it won’t.

We’re talking here mostly about honeybees and pesticides, as they’re the only bee we know much about. They have a lot to cope with at the moment other than neonicotinoids. For a start there has been the weather here. I have lost a really nice swarm which I hived last summer. Heartbreaking. I did everything right, but they just gave up. Most of my competent beekeeping friends report significant mortality over the extended winter, following last year’s filthy summer. These are experienced beekeepers who keep their bees really well; they’re not over-interventionist or “commercial”, nor do they just trust to luck. We’ve all dealt with the recent enemies of honeybees – nosema and varroa – but this is a new battle.

Photo: Penn State University

Bees and pesticides don’t mix, and the coktail of pesticides her team are finding in pollen and wax are horrific. They found 31 pesticides in one pollen sample. The average is 6, which is bad enough*. These pesticides can have sub-lethal effects, they can be systemic (like neonicotinoids) and they impact on larva and adult bees in different ways, so their effects are difficult to assess.

What’s worse is that they can be synergistic, so that in combination their impact can be much more extreme than you can predict. Neonicotinoids are very toxic, but more traditional pesticides combine to have really unpleasant effects on colonies. This is true of fungicides and miticides too. Why do I mention miticides? The vast majority of wax in U.S. hives has traces of stuff called Fluvalinate, which was routinely used to wack varroa mites and combines unpleasantly with other pesticides. Fungicides too can be dangerous to bees as they impact microbial activity in the bee gut. Bees also suffer much more exposure to them, as they’re used indiscriminately.

There’s also an issue in the U.S. with the vast monocultures that migratory bee colonies are asked to pollinate. Honeybees are “polylectic” – that’s to say that like Bumblebees they prefer different types of forage to provide a varied and healthy diet. Large scale U.S. commercial beekeeping must add to the strees that these honeybees experience.

So what does Maryanne recommend we do?
1. Manage our honeybees better. We can’t just leave them to fend for themselves, but we can adopt better beekeeping practices. I’d like to think they’re the sort of things I promote already. Change wax regularly, leave lots of stores so artificial feeding is only necessary in dire circumstances, and leave be throughout the autumn and winter months. It’s not rocket science.
2. Provide diverse and season long sources of forage.
3. Improve our regulatory agencies. As in the U.K., U.S. regulators are only interested in the lethal effects of individual toxins on a small group of affected species, which is hopeless. Realistically, we’re not going to be able to stop people using pesticides and honeybees, with their vast ranges, are going to be exposed to them. We have to make sure that the damage that does to them is as limited as possible.
It’s worth pointing out that we can all help with points 2 and 3 by being bee friendly gardeners!

*I hasten to add that the honey itself has no problem. Most of these nasties are fat soluble rather than water soluble, so turn up in beeswax and not honey.

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Spring in Somerset

The (heavy clay) soil is completely unworkable. Some of it has turned into Glastonbury gloop. Even where it hasn’t I can’t dig it manually, let alone get machines on it. I’m trying to sow green manure in the swamp that will be our back garden to improve things.

Water feature

I suppose this extreme weather is gratifying for us in a way, as we’re building a stunning new house to deal with it. In the garden, though, we need help. Perhaps it’s time for the gardening Press to scrap all those articles and programmes about Mediterranean planting and address the issues we’re actually confronted with as gardeners. If the weather here is getting more extreme rather than warmer as a result of global warming could we have some help in dealing with it? I have no idea how to tackle our land – no idea at all – and I can find no advice other than the helpful observation that roses like heavy clay. WTF? as the youth of today might say. In the meantime, here’s a cheery tune about the weather here for the youth of yesteryear. Perhaps it hasn’t hasn’t changed much over the last 60 years after all.

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A chicken and a wildflower meadow don’t seem a natural combination, but in fact they’re a match made in heaven. Let me explain.

Last year we were approached through the British Beekeepers’ Association by Noble Foods, the biggest producer of eggs in the UK. An enterprising manager realized that chicken ranges might offer some interesting opportunities to help bees. If you go to a free range chicken unit you’ll understand. In the middle of a field is a vast barn, with something like 30,000 chickens inside. They’re free to wander about, and indeed have to have a certain space per chicken to wander about. The thing is, they’re not really interested. The barns are snug and the chickens have food, water, and egg laying sites. They might run about outside around their barn, but very quickly a visitor will be walking across an unpopulated grass field. A large chicken free grass field.

Graham – the enterprising manager – got to thinking that doing something with those unproductive grass areas might be a good idea. Noble Foods had already planted trees on some areas of their chicken ranges, but he felt there must be other opportunities. All the vast chicken-less grass areas were being used for was to make the odd bale of hay; it’s verboten to use them for a commercial crop. Not only that, but uncropped grass needs regular cutting so they were actually costing hard pressed egg producers to maintain. He hit on the idea of wildflower meadows.

Fantastic:
1. Lower maintenance cost.
2. Great for chicken welfare – lots of invertebrate snacks.
3. Large scale habitat creation – genuinely significant impact on the landscape and a fantastic PR opportunity for Noble Foods.
4. Engagement with local communities – Graham had thought of local beekeepers, but everyone will love the aesthetic appeal.

There are various practical hurdles, of course, which is where we come in. With the help of external consultants we’ve overcome the issues and will be starting to ship Noble a range of native wildflower meadow seed mixes in the next couple of weeks. These seed mixes are a cut above your normal agricultural cultivars – they are proper wildflowers. Graham has signed up producers for over 100 acres in year one, and we’re targeting 800 acres over a decade. If that sounds a lot, well – it is. If all goes well we will buy seed from the early adopters after year three, process it and sell it on. Noble Foods’ retailers have started getting excited about the project too, and I’m sure the Beekeepers will be chuffed to bits.

I’m so excited about this wildflower meadow project because of its size and because it’s such a good illustration of why I set up Habitat Aid. This is in everyone’s interest, for reasons commercial as much as ecological. My (small ethical UK) seed supplier loves me. The farmers love Graham. The retailers/local community/beekeepers/consumers love Noble Foods. I’m sure the chickens will love the wildflower meadows too.

Thanks Graham – great stuff, and fingers crossed. I’m sure Noble Foods will benefit in ways we can’t yet even imagine!

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I had an engaging day over the weekend at the Kingcombe Centre in Dorset learning about solitary bees and wasps. I knew a bit about them – particularly solitary bees – but now I know a whole lot more, particularly about some of the weird wasps out there.
Your back garden is home to all sorts of completely unexpected solitary wasps. Spider and bee killing wasps. Wasps that dig and wasps that build nests. Tiny wasps and wasps with enormous needle like ovipositors. I think I can tell all the Apoidea (bees) from the solitary and social wasps (Scoliodea and Vespoidea) now, and the terrifying Pompiloidea (spider-hunting wasps) from beautiful metallic cuckoo wasps (Chrysidoidea) and digger wasps (Sphecoidea).

Spider-hunting wasp (photo: BWARS)

*No letters please!

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March Newsletter
I’ve been sweating away upgrading our website, which has now gone live. Inevitably it has been a lot of work for what looks like not very much of a result (!), but it should significantly improve its performance.
We have included Black Poplars from Aylesbury Vale, which is very exciting. We can now offer either sex of this rare native tree.
In other news, we’ve been working on some large scale seed projects, for the Friends of the Earth’s Bee World project and Co-op’s Plan Bee. To say nothing of project Chicken (see below). Good stuff.
Talking about bees, it looks as if the campaigns to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in the UK are beginning to pay off, as retail outlets start to withdraw them from sale and political pressure mounts. More good news.
We’re at the Ecobuild show in London next week – do drop by if you’re there.

Reader Offer
We’re hugely appreciative of the personal recommendations we get which fuel our progress. As a small thank you to the readers of our newsletter, if you quote “HAL03/13″ at our website checkout you will get a £10 discount on your purchase. I’ve cashed my own £10 in to buy some clay meadow seed mix in for our new house!

Courses
We’re delighted to welcome Matthew Wilson to our Somerset HQ to give the keynote speech in our day for garden designers on using native plants. Our other external speakers are Ted Chapman from Kew and Pond Conservation’s Jeremy Biggs. Places are limited, so book now to avoid tears! It’s on the 21st June. Please email for further details.
 
 
 
 
 
Your Own Seed Packets
Wildflower seed packets are great for promotions or fund raising. We can offer a wide variety of bespoke packet designs. As you’d expect, our seed mixes are top quality, UK provenance, and designed around your requirements. We’d be delighted to quote for any sized job.
 
 
 
Not chicken feed
I’m delighted to reveal a fantastic project with Noble Foods, the biggest free range egg producer in the UK. We’re supplying them with the seed and support to create 800 acres of traditional wildflower meadow on their chicken farms over a ten year period. We’re starting with over 100 acres this spring, and will be harvesting seed from these initial sites to sell to later adopters. I’m thrilled with the scale and intent of the projest, and confident it will be a commercial boon for the client.

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Sow stalls are a shocking scandal. To my mind, as they’re an animal welfare issue they’re much more offensive than any meat mislabelling problem, and yet few people even know what sow stalls are. So let’s start by quoting Wikipedia:

A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig (sow) may be kept during pregnancy, and in effect for most of her adult life. The enclosures measure 6.6 ft x 2.0 ft (2 m x 60 cm) and house sows that weigh up to 600 lbs (270 kg).

The floors of the crates are made of concrete, and are slatted to allow waste to be collected below. As the sows outgrow the crates, they must sleep on their chests, unable to turn around. A few days before giving birth, they are moved to farrowing crates, where they are able to lie down to nurse while being held apart from their piglets.

Pork producers argue that they are needed because sows who are housed together will fight. Animal advocates regard their use as one of the most inhumane features of intensive animal agriculture.

I know a bit about pigs. We keep them every now and then, originally as I was keen to show the children where meat came from. I was then shocked at the way these intelligent and sociable animals could be treated when farmed commercially. I’ll spare you the pictures of the sow stalls and show you one of our Large Blacks, which are among the most endearing and easy tempered animals I’ve ever come across.

The UK banned sow stalls in 1999, with the support of retailers and processors. It amazed me that we continued to cheerfully import pork and bacon from countries that hadn’t. As with the horsemeat issue, cost, of course, was the reason why. Since 2002 the UK has imported more and more pig meat, from countries where sow stalls were still used. Their pig meat was cheaper, of course. This was despite the EU* passing legislation in 2001 requiring other member States to do the same.

Twelve years later there are still 17 EU States flouting the ban on sow stalls. Portugal is only 58% compliant and France 72%, for example. Even Denmark, one of the biggest importers of pig meat into the UK, is only 94% compliant.

The National Pig Association has launched a Wall of Fame (and Shame), on which it carries the names of UK food retailers and processors who have signed up to buying their pig meat from compliant sources. How many retailers have currently signed up to sourcing all their meat products this way? Two.

Let’s charitably interpret this as another symptom of the difficulty in unpicking the wretchedly complicated supply chains in the food industry – the list has only been live for a month. It’s a story worth following, though. How long will it take the consumer to understand that ethically produced food costs more?

*To my mind, without proper labelling best not to eat pork or bacon at all if you’re in the U.S., where most producers still use sow stalls.

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I’m sure the various campaigns to ban neonicotinoids waged by people like Buglife, the Friends of the Earth and the BBCT are going to carry the day in the UK. I’m confident not least because they are backed by inceasingly persuasive science and, recently, Brussels. A number of retailers have started taking neonicotinoid based products like Bayer’s Provado off the shelves. Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee is hearing evidence about them too.
Just as I thought neonicotinoids were about to get booted into touch in the UK, the agrichemical business is fighting a spirited rearguard action to save them. I wanted to pick up one point in particular from that, which I heard repeated again on the radio this morning by a man from Syngenta.

Stop!

The man from Syngenta said that bee losses were largely a consequence of varroa, not neonicotinoids. This is disingenuous. Recent research suggests the effects of neonicotinoids on honeybees are most marked when in combination with other problems, like the kind of viral diseases spread by Varroa destructor. The key point I wanted to make, though, is this. VARROA ONLY AFFECTS HONEYBEES. There is one honey bee in the UK. As I have blogged before, There are 26 Bumblebees and something over 240 species of solitary bees. Why are they declining? If it’s not varroa what is it? Some of the most persuasive recent research has looked at the impact of neonicotinoids on bumblebees. As for neonicotinoids’ effect on solitary bees (and butterflies, hoverflies, etc.), well… er… we don’t really know.

I did agree with the man from Syngenta when he said that banning neonicotinoids might not halt bee declines, and if it happens there’s a danger bees will disappear off the map of public awareness. There’s climate change, habitat loss, disease, new predators – all sorts of threats which still have to be dealt with.

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