Morning:
8°c
My garden guests can dine at the ivy
Felix Lloyd15 Apr 2009
Robins are nesting in the Gold Heart ivy on the front of my house. I've never let my ivy climb higher than the top of the living room window, so over the years it has bulked up to provide the perfect spring creche; then in autumn its flowers give bees, lace wings and hoverflies their last feed of the year and, finally, it produces black berries for the birds when food is scarce.
Most householders get twitchy about ivy anywhere near their walls while blithely ignoring it on their trees but as long as you control it on both, it's not the enemy. I have a moral dilemma, though: my front gutter urgently needs attention. The next major downpour will probably force an already weakened seal to split, allowing water to cascade on to the window ledge below. At the same time, the ivy is inching its way unchecked towards the, er, gutter.
So, should I assume the robins have yet to lay their eggs and move them along now; let them raise one family but persuade them to find a more suitable des res for any second attempt; hope the next few months are rain-free and that the gutter holds out until autumn?
If we have a dry summer, apart from solving my robin dilemma, butterflies and moths will at least have a chance to regroup. According to last week's report from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, butterflies are at their lowest ebb for 25 years. Extinction looms for some. Last summer was particularly disastrous because extreme wet affects butterfly breeding, as well as the fragile insect's ability to fly to its food sources. As for their habitats - surprise, surprise, intensive development and modern farming practices have put paid to those.
It's up to us urban gardeners to step into the breach. I've planted nectar-rich single-petalled plants - light purple Buddleia Lochinch (butterflies won't come to dark or white buddleias, so no Black Knight), valerian, thyme, aubretia, cosmos, pale sedums (not Autumn Joy-Herbstfreude, no insect cares for that), asters, Verbena bonariensis ... When the sun is out I chop fruit into a hanging dish, add fruit juice and site it near the buddleia. Caterpillars need food too. I've got a small dedicated border with wild flowers, native grasses and nettles for them.
And overwintering butterflies like the Red Admiral are welcome to stay in my insect hotel, which has everything except a minibar. (Wooden pallets stuffed with bricks, twigs, pine cones, hollow bamboo canes, grasses and cotton wool make a deluxe Hilton for myriad bugs.)
So far this year I've had a Red Admiral and a female Orange Tip in my garden, plus a couple of butterflies that fluttered on by before I could see them properly. Oh, and an unidentified and probably unidentifiable caterpillar (I suspect it's going to be a moth, and they're in even worse shape than butterflies).
As to the robin dilemma - well, what do you think I've decided?
