4 plants and a beautiful, though short stay, visitor.
By seaburngirl
11 comments
In the garden I have deliberately allowed a native ivy to colonise the top of my ‘atrocity corner’. the flowers provide nectar for winter flying insects and of course the berries provide food for many birds too. The ivy provides plenty of nesting sites and this year there are is a pair of blackbirds and a pair of sparrows.
Intermingled with the beech hedge and many other places in the garden there are the honeysuckles. Many are self sown but they provide excellent flowers for colour and the evening scent is wonderful. Many insects feed on the pollen and drink the nectar. A few years ago we had an elephant hawk moth hatch and feed on the honeysuckle. There is a blurry hoverfly in the bottom left corner coming in for nectar.
Along the boundary fence there are several hawthorn plants. They are all self sown or gifts from the birds.
The hawthorn has gorgeous flowers in spring and followed by berries in the autumn. Again providing food and shelter for a welter of animals. Berries are forming nicely.
I regularly pull up saplings of elder as they get everywhere; the gutters of the garage as well as in the borders. There are a couple that grow unmolested on the boundary and again like the other three already mentioned they provide food, shelter etc for animals.
So where is this blog going? Well….
Yesterday morning on the inside of the door of the conservatory there was this moth.
A beautiful swallow tailed moth. According to the books they are short lived as adults flying, mating and laying eggs in June and July.
The caterpillar feeds on ivy, honeysuckle, hawthorn and elder and pupates in the soil over winter. So due to these plants that I have liked for different reasons, I have this beautiful visitor, albeit it briefly.
28 Jul, 2019
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Comments
Hi Eileen, it's amazing the amount of wildlife you can get in the garden, given the right conditions and planting, isn't it, very good photo's as well, Derek.
28 Jul, 2019
How's wonderful.....so satisfying when that happens!!
28 Jul, 2019
That is beautiful, such a treat for you to see. I am making a pot 'border' under our window of all bee/butterfly friendly plants - I have a butterfly bush, the lychnis, cornflowers, Joe Pye Weed, single flower dahlia, a salvia, a huge perennial sweetpea and a gallardia - it's like a McDonalds for bees..........and all their mates!
28 Jul, 2019
Must be a good chance that now one has found a welcoming environment you'll get the ongoing lifecycle?
Fingers crossed 😊
28 Jul, 2019
That's a lovely moth SBG! We have all the shrubs you mention and I've never seen one of those - perhaps time to look a bit more closely! I love wild ivy too, though ts a pain if it gets out of hand. Nice in Christmas arrangements too (sorry...)
28 Jul, 2019
Beautiful! A lovely blog. Makes me really think about the wilder plants!
28 Jul, 2019
There is a lot of argument about whether Ivy damages trees. I found this interesting page on the Woodland Trust website. The answer seems to be no. Ivy does not damage trees. Yay!
28 Jul, 2019
A fleeting beauty then SBG but obviously liked it in your garden.
29 Jul, 2019
This morning Victoria and I had a walk around the house and spotted 3 other moths. Riband wave moth, single dotted wave moth and a footman moth [probably the common]. She also spotted 3 wasp nest beetles on her bedroom window. there must be a wasp nest near by and the beetle lays its eggs in rotting wood, then they hatch crawl onto a wasp then the beetle larva feed on wasp larvae.
29 Jul, 2019
That's wonderful, SBG!
31 Jul, 2019
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Well done for providing habitats and food for wildlife. Half of my garden is now specifically ‘given over’ to wildlife. On my xmas list is a wildlife camera as I really want to see what's going on in my wildlife friendly garden. That moth is beautiful, so graceful in that white cream colour.
28 Jul, 2019