Spring Watch Butterfly and Moth Special in Higgy's Garden!!!...

Hello All,

Well what an exciting time it has been in the garden over the last month or so! Not only have we had some great periods of hot sunshine that brought out lots of butterflies, we have recorded many more new species of wildlife almost on a daily basis! In fact I simply haven't been able to keep up with what has been happening and my records and identifications are really behind now!

Marbled Whites' appeared in the garden for the first time this summer and are now regular visitors.

As I touched on in my previous post, we were privileged to be approached by the BBC and asked if they could film for a Spring Watch special about butterflies and moths in our garden! Now I still haven't got to the bottom of how they got wind of what we have been doing for wildlife in our garden as several people have claimed responsibility!! All I can say is however it happened, thank you very much as we had a great day filming and thoroughly enjoyed the finished program, which had some fabulous content about butterflies and moths.

Martin Hughes-Games was the presenter and meeting him was great as he is a really genuine guy who is exactly the same off screen as he is on screen making the day really good fun! The whole team were in fact superb making it a great thing to be part of and of course promoting what can be done in your own garden for wildlife to a 'massive' audience! Let's hope we inspire a few more people to garden for wildlife and enjoy the wildlife that benefits from their efforts as we continue to do here!

Leading up to the day of filming we had less than two weeks to get the garden looking at it's best. I will confess that I spent every evening after work deadheading, weeding, planting and generally titivating to try and present it as well as I could. Things did get a bit stressful at times as many of the plants that should have been in flower where so far behind thanks to the wet winter and record breaking cold spring we experienced! This made life very difficult and I did use my local nursery to 'plug' a few gaps where we had lost plants from the cold spell.

If you can find a dedicated plant nursery who are reliable and grow a good variety of plants such as Middlecombe Nursery who I use do, then I would recommend that you stick with them. I particularly like Middlecombe as when I visit the plants are absolutely buzzing with bees and alive with butterflies showing that they are healthy and full of pollen unlike many plants that are mass grown and over-bred from abroad!

If you live in the North Somerset area then check out Middlecombe for yourself and get your own garden buzzing! For more info here's a link to their own website that tells you little more about them and the plants they grow...   http://www.middlecombenursery.co.uk/General/AboutUs.html The nursery is situated just off of the A370 at Congresbury so is easy and accessible.

So with the onset of a film-crew arriving and having something to film I'm going to show below some of the plants we concentrated on not only for the camera but more importantly for our pollinators who were having an extremely difficult Spring at that time..

                                          Astrantia, and....

                                            Sweet William, and...... 

              .....Scabious make a fantastic early summer plant combination enjoyed by all pollinators including bees and butterflies.

 Oxeye Daisy threads it's way all around the garden in late spring / early summer providing nectar for early pollinators. I chop it right back once the flowers start to go over and it provides a second flush of flowers later in the summer... 

As well as the above plants that featured in the garden when filming took place (mid June) was a new plant that I sowed last year and it has proved absolutely irresistible to all types of bees is Campanula Canterbury Bells as below...

Grown for the first time this year Campanula Canterbury Bells....

 The flowers are like giant bells and the plant itself grew to about 3feet tall. All types of bees absolutely love this plant and are amusing to watch as they cover themselves in generous amounts of pollen that this plant provides!...

The other plant that we felt was a bit of a banker and has shown spectacular results for us this year is Knapweed that also attracts great numbers of pollinators of different types...

So as you can see from above we were relying on a few reliable plants to bring the pollinators in and of course add some much needed colour for the cameras!

The day before filming was planned to take place the heavens opened and we had torrential rain! I couldn't believe it and my already high stress levels were through the roof by now! I was moaning to my wife saying that "I haven't seen a butterfly all week" and "the garden isn't where it should be nothing's flowering when it should!" "There won't be anything to film!!"  My wife just retorted that there was no more that I could do and the BBC should be able to get something onto film!

Quicker than expected the day of the shoot arrived, I got out of bed and opened the bedroom curtains in the hope that I would see sunshine and butterflies everywhere; No such luck I realised as I looked out onto an overcast day full of drizzly rain!! This really wasn't what I'd hoped for but it's what the day brought so we just had to go with it.

10am arrived and so did Martin and the crew, I was relieved to see that they were all good fun people and that we should have a fun filled day if nothing else! The cameras and equipment were humped around to the rear garden and I was blown away with what I saw next....

....the crew were stood on the decking open mouthed just admiring the garden, then I got a barrage of compliments and lovely comments about what I had created, which I have to say was somewhat of a surprise and extremely flattering. I think that often you work with something so closely that you don't take a step back admire your hard work and what has been achieved. I'm sure that there is a lesson for all of us there!?
 
Even better now was that the sun had come out and we could see pollinators starting to flutter around the flowers which had also plucked up thanks to the torrential rain the day before!

The view of the garden that met the TV crew on the day of filming...

The day went really well and the whole experience of filming was really interesting. On top of this the sun stayed out and the day got hotter and hotter, combined with the rain we had the day before and overnight the garden just bursted into life with a real sparkle!

Martin and I walked around the garden and talked about what I had done to encourage wildlife and some of the thinking behind it. My panic from the day before was now gone and we sparked up a real rapport batting off quips against each other. The producer had brought a script but neither of us needed it as I think we could both 'talk the hind legs off of a donkey' given half the chance! Hopefully both of our passion and enthusiasm for wildlife came through on film.

On our trip around the garden we were joined by a few Small Tortoiseshells as well as Droneflies and Hovverflies, Bees buzzed over the colourful flowers and when we went paused next to the wildlife pond a couple of frogs even popped up to say hello! 

A few Small Tortoisehells arrived for the camera...

Our walk past the pond found an audience....

In the long tussocky grass by the old stone bridge feature we filmed a butterfly or moth chrysalis...

 Only to be immediately joined by an inquisitive Toad!!....

It was at this point that we spoke at length about Ragwort, a really controversial plant as it supports many species of insect many of which are in severe decline or even endangered but it is toxic to cattle. Research has shown that a cow or a horse would need to eat about 14lbs in weight of the plant for it to be fatal, however there are many other claims made about it. If you want to read more about it then use this link which will take you through to a site giving details & facts, http://www.ragwortfacts.com/index.html I'll let you make your own mind up about it and whether it should be included in a wildlife garden or not...

Ragwort, friend or foe?? No comment, I'll let you decide!...

We moved onto the mini wild flower meadow and Martin commented on the amount of bees and hovverflies buzzing all around us. I have to say, despite the crews amazement I have been bitterly disappointed with the wild flowers this year so far. As we sowed lots of perennials seeds I had hope for a few more plants to be in flower during filming but it was timed just after the spring wildflowers had flowered but before our summer species came into bloom! Normally by this time of the year I would have also planted annual plugs such as Corn Marigolds and Corn Flowers. As I knew filming was likely to happen this year I ordered in plugs rather than grow my own which turned out to be a big mistake! Our supplier let us down and it was only after persistently chasing them they sent the Corn Marigold plugs and Cuckoo Flower plugs a week before we filmed. The plugs were small and some were damaged when they arrived so we ended up with a lot less flowers than hoped for in the mini meadow which was disappointing! (A mental note to myself to grow my own again next year!!)

Despite being let down by our supplier we still had a few wildflowers in flower for filming!...

Wild Carrot has prove a very successful and long flowering plant for pollinators...

Self sown thistles have also turned up trumps this year. Ladybirds have feasted on them as they've grown and now that they have started to flower they are loved by bees and butterflies...

 With a good few hours of film under our belts we stopped for some lunch including a delicious cream tea made for the occasion by my wife! The cream tea seemed to go down very well but was cut short as the crew dashed out with mobile phones to take pictures of the garden to show friends and family! This did seem strange but I was extremely flattered that the garden should have such a positive effect on people!

The afternoon was taken up with Martin recording the close to the piece and of course my now famous quote of "Well you don't get a garden like this by having a tidy shed!!" As you can imagine I received many texts about this following it going out on air!

Before I knew it the day was over and the crew had left! But what a cracking day it was and I can honestly say that I enjoyed every minute of it!

If there was anything that I would change, then it would have been to film the following day as the weather got hot and sunny and we had an absolute deluge of Small Tortoiseshell butterflies descend on the garden!

I was actually so overwhelmed by the amount of butterflies and insects that I shot the following video footage the day after filming and sent it in to the guys to demonstrate that we do normally have a few more pollinators than they saw the day before! If you watch the video you will see that it actually got to the stage where you had to watch where you stood!!....

http://youtu.be/z95xuGxr0i0 (Link to my Pollinators Special video)

I think that does really give you an insight into my day of filming with the BBC which I hope you will agree was a roaring success. I also hope that you watched the program on Friday and agree that it was a really well made and fascinating look at the life-cycle of butterflies and moths!?

Keeping with the butterfly and moth theme, next time I will talk in more detail about my garden moths and what we found when we did our first moth trap in Higgy's Garden! 

To wet your appetite I'll leave you with one of the more common moths that we found but please do sign in next time to see what else turned up in the trap!!?......

This Small Emerald (Hemithea chrysoprasaria) was one of over forty moths that turned up in our first ever moth trap - see what else we caught next time!!...

On that note I will bid you all goodbye and hopefully catch you all hear next time!

As always thanks for reading and please do send in your questions and opinions or even ideas for the garden or blog as they are all read and very much appreciated.

Cheers

Best

Higgy