Blog

Tackling Pollinator Declines

All About Bees An interesting day in London last week, at a meeting to discuss the decline in pollinating insects. There were some interesting and highly competent folk there and...

Tell Me About My Wildflower Seed

I spent a fascinating day at Kew yesterday listening to lectures on wildflower seed. It was hosted by NASSTEC, a hopelessly complicated acronym for the even more complicated Native Seed...

Hand Collected Meadow Seed Mixes

Meadow seed mixes come in several forms, but it had never struck me that hand collected mixes might be one of them. There are generally four types of meadow seed...

Jam Today

Earlier this summer a copy of Holly Farrell'sThe Jam Maker's Gardenarrived for me to review. It has sat in the catering department's in tray ever since, but now jam making...

Neonicotinoids And Bees (Again)

Yesterday I saw two papers on neonicotinoids and bees. They are the first large scale look at how these systemic pesticides affect bees in the field. We've known for some...

Tree Bumblebees

Tree bumblebees, Bombus hypnorum, were the main topic of conversation on the Bumblebee Conservation Trust stand at RHS Chatsworth last week. I last blogged about them in 2013, but it...