The bee loud glade.

Various green groups are currently running campaigns to get us to be aware of persticides that are damaging our rural environment.

Chemicals that kill one sort of insect in order to get good crops of wheat or barley are also killing the bees.

These small creatures are vitally important to our lives....if they are not buzzing around, pollinating our crops and our fruit then we would either have little to eat or find new ways of artificial pollination...

A couple of years ago I went out with small camel hair brushes to pollinate the apple trees when I noticed how few bees were about.

Several local bee keepers here complained that their bees were not doing well, their numbers were down.

One of the problems is the lack of summer flowers....the real meadow flowers, not the over engineered cultivated varieties.

My gardener says anything growing in the wrong place is a weed and he used to be ruthless at chopping anything down that grew wild along the hedgerows.

We have now reached an accommodation.

The large mounds of earth left when the new path was dug out at the end of the garden are now full of wild flowers growing in great profusion. In the back end we will strim it all down to start again next year.

Now in its first year we have dragon flies and bees all over it...brightly coloured poppy, huge daisies of various kinds, rose bay willow herb, buttercups and scarlet pimpernel are being visited daily by the bees.

A line of a poem springs to mind by Yates.

"I shall arise and go now and got to Innisfree. Nine bean rows will I have there and a hive for the honey bee. And live alone in the bee loud glade."

It's not quite a glade but it is bee loud and I do live alone.....

All chemicals are banned from the garden of course and this year we have fruit as well as colour where ever I look. There are also conkers growing on the horse chestnut. It is a great joy, for me as well as the bees.

 

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