Rippingale nature columnist shares ideas on maintaining a wildlife friendly garden

As I write in early July we are learning to live with the unsettled weather, writes Rippingale nature columnist Ian Misselbrook.

It was mostly sunny yesterday, but a brisk westerly wind led to most of the butterflies sheltering deep in the grass, frustrating my attempts to photograph them. However, I did manage to get close to a small heath on the ground and eventually a beautiful marbled white alighted on a greater knapweed flower on a nature reserve, just a few miles from Stamford.

My wife and I try to manage our garden to attract wildlife. A friend of mine commented that the garden is therefore maintenance free – far from it!

In April I was forced to conclude that couch grass had taken over in one of our wildflower patches, so I decided to work round some of the surviving perennial wildflowers, lift the turf and then cultivate to create a seedbed for a new wildflower mixture. This was no mean feat and it took me two days despite borrowing a motorised cultivator.

Previously I had sown a grass wildflower meadow mixture suitable for our alkaline soils, but this spring I decided to go for a 100% wildflower mixture which I had designed for an Irish seed company, specifically to attract butterflies, bees and other pollinating insects. I am very happy as despite being sown in cold and wet conditions in April the two annuals and at least four perennials are already flowering. What’s more the butterflies and bees are arriving, enjoying the shelter from the wind in the calmer environment of the garden.

Still on the subject of gardens, spotted flycatchers last nested in our garden during the glorious summer of 2020 when we were in lockdown. The fact that they only raised one youngster to fledge probably goes someway to explain why this once common species has declined so considerably. As far as I am aware none have nested in my village since then, but I am pleased to report that at least one pair is busy feeding young in one of the nearby villages. Although to look at they are typical LBJ’s (little brown jobs!) their aerobatic skills to catch insects on the wing are wonderful to behold.

I suspect that the main reason for their decline is due to the shortage of insects, mainly due to the wetter spring and summers, but another contribution is likely to be the widespread use of insecticides in agriculture and gardens. Certainly, swifts and swallows, aerial feeders on insects have declined markedly in my village.

Many swift nesting boxes were erected to mitigate for the loss of under eaves nesting sites when energy saving improvements to properties were made, but breeding numbers are at least 50% lower than the warm summer of 2023.