Blog

Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare)

Viper's Bugloss is one of my favourite British wildflowers. It looks like a kind of poor man's Delphinium, but flowers for ever and it's just great for bees. It's not...

Solitary Bees

I empathise with solitary bees. When we think bee I guess we tend to think of honey bees - the one species of truly social bee we have. They chat...

Breakfast!

As you'd expect, we have lots of goodies around the garden for bees at this time of year. I'd already seen my honeybees on the crocuses and today - great...

The Value of Nature

I'm always depressed listening to conservationists standing up for the species they're working for on an economic basis. Apparently people respond better to the threat to "pollination services" that would...

The Invertebrate Conservation Conference

Last week I had a very jolly day in London at the Invertebrate Conservation Conference. The presentations were generally high quality and surprisingly accessible to a non-specialist like me. The...

Himalayan Balsam

What's that lovely pink flower that's appeared all the way down the river bank? I'd never noticed it before. It's called Himalayan Balsam - yes, the flowers are very pretty....