When even Jeremy Clarkson, the king of Britain’s petrolheads, says that we’re heading for an “insect annihilation”, then you know there must be something wrong.
Put a bit of buzz into your garden: bees and pollinators need all the help they can get
Clarkson, on his Amazon TV show Clarkson’s Farm, vowed to do something about the loss of the planet’s pollinators.
And now Friends of the Earth are offering you the chance to get a real buzz about doing something, too, in your own, (probably) smaller patch of the planet.
For donations from as little as just £5, Friends of the Earth will provide you with their Bee Saver Kit.
Echoing the points made in the Clarkson clip, Friends of the Earth say, “The countryside is being contaminated by chemicals. In fact 35 different species of bees could face extinction in the future.
“But you can help. The Friends of the Earth Bee Saver Kit equips you with everything you need to help change the fortunes of bees.”
“Now’s a perfect time to get outside and plant some bee-friendly wildflower seeds.
“Make a donation and you’ll get a kit delivered straight to your doorstep.”
Your Bee Saver Kit includes:
- Wildflower seeds – to help provide vital food and habitat
- Bee saver guide – with tips including how to build a bee hotel
- Bee spotter guide – to identify us when we visit your flowers
- Garden planner – to help you plan a bee-friendly green space
- Bee postcard – to send to your loved ones
- Bee Saver Kit folder – to store your bee-saving materials in one place.
“Even if it’s just a small patch of green space, you can still provide nectar and pollen for bees and other polliators,” Friends of the Earth say. “You’d be surprised at how much you can grow in a window box or flower pots.”
Your donation today will help Friends of the Earth continue its important work, including protecting the bees.
Click here for more from the Friends of the Earth and to order your Bee Saver Kit.
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It’s all so simple and easy to provide food for bees.
If everyone with a small garden planted just 4 flowering ornamental shrubs or or herbaceous flowering plants, with one that flowers in winter, another that flowers in Spring, one in Summer, and one in Autumn, that would provide a good amount of food for bees and other pollinators, year long.
Window boxes and planters can hold quite a few plants too.
These plants just need to be of varieties that have simple “single” flowers, where the petals don’t stop the bees from accessing the nectar that attracts and feeds them them, in the process of which they pick up the dusty pollen that they pick up and dleiberately collect, and which gets transferred to polinate other plants nearby. Sadly, the showier varieties of flowers, with fancy double rows of petals, tend to physically stop the bees getting in to the flower, so they can’t feed and get the pollen.
Every town would become a haven for bees, if we all had 4 flowering plants. Imagine how many gardens there are in Croydon….. yet so many are totally devoid of flowers. Wild flower patches are brilliant, and clover in the lawn also provides hugely important food. By delaying cutting of the lawn until June, or cutting it a bit higher, clover and other plants can be left to flower.
Anyone in Croydon with a sunny garden on chalk can easily encourage chalk-loving wild flowers by the hundred. The bees and butterflies, moths , hoverflies and grasshoppers all love these flowers. Plant out into the garden, or into the lawn, selected wildflowers as small plants (such as cowslips), or as “plugs” (plantlets with good roots, grown in a thumb sized chunk of compost) , or scatter seeds on flower geds, or scratch bare patches on the lawn, then scatter suitable seeds, and then leave things to happen over the Spring. It is possible to create the beginnings of a mini meadow in just a few months. Later, in October, just cut the sward of grass and dried stems down and rake off the debris, ideally leaving any last seed heads for the goldfinches and seed eating birds to enjoy. After 2 years, it can all be dream of beauty and wild flower wonder!
If farmers were paid to plant “Clarkson strips” of wild flowers , and allow plants that are already there, to grow and seed, unsprayed, the countryside would soon be transformed into a much richer habitat. This might be coming with the new Michael Gove farm , post-Brexit subsidies for “Public money for public goods”, in this case, public subsidies for making and restoring wild flowers and habitats, but how much money, in cash strapped UK plc., is not yet known.
Well done Jem….. he is becoming a real eco warrior in his old age!