Royal Horticultural Society and the RHS Plants for Pollinators Scheme

"RHS Plants for Pollinators"

...Wait! I thought it was the "RHS Perfect for Pollinators" scheme? Yes, yes it was. Here's what happened.

In 2011 the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society, here in the UK) launched "RHS Perfect for Pollinators" plant labelling scheme. It was a great way of helping the gardening public choose plants to support pollinating insects.

Nurseries and Garden Centres could register with the RHS, and print a logo on appropriate plant labels and advertising material to help guide shoppers towards flowering plants that would be attractive to bumble bees, honey bees, solitary bees, hover flies, beetles, moths and butterflies.

Super! However...

Studies began to show that some of the plants bearing the logo "RHS Perfect for Pollinators" had actually been exposed to pesticides during their growing. So although the plant had the right attributes to attract beneficial pollinators, it could potentially be lethal to them.

The RHS realised that they couldn't possibly 'police' all the commercial plant producers in the world to ensure that the logo was applied only to organically grown plants, so instead they chose to slightly tweak their branding.

Enter the new "RHS Plants for Pollinators" logo

The rebranding took place on 10th May 2018, and should soon begin to filter it's way on to the marketplace.

So remember, when you see this logo, it is commenting on the attractiveness of the plant species to pollinating insects; be that the colour, markings, flower shape, scent etc, rather than suggesting that these plants are safe for pollinators because have been grown without coming into contact with pesticides or other chemicals.

It's an important distiction. 

The RHS are trying to increase our awareness of beneficial insects, applying pressure to reduce the use of harmful chemicals in horticulture at large, and are also working with the industry to produce a list of Organic plant nurseries and producers, which is available on their website.

Choosing Plants for Pollinators

Keep your eyes peeled for these logos next time you go plant shopping, understand what they mean and that they make no promises, but above all, do your own research.

Try to provide a range of plants that flower over as wide a timespan as you can, to ensure pollinators have access to food throughout the year. The RHS have a list of pollinator friendly plants but here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Buddleja flower through summer well into autumn, this is a dwarf variety and is just as attractive to pollinators as a big cultivar

Hollyhocks flower in summer on very tall stems, single flowered cultivars are best for pollinators rather than flouncy doubles

Phlox paniculata flower during summer into early autumn

Allium flower mainly during May - bees love them!

Crocus - one of the earliest flowering plants of the year and a vital food source for pollinators

Lavender - wonderful for insects (and the lesser-known pollinating hens!)

Love

Rebecca xx

NB: The Royal Horticultural Society, and its logo, are trade marks of The Royal Horticultural Society (Registered Charity No 222879/SC038262) and used under licence”.

My Garden Tour Video - May 2018

There's so much going on in the garden at the moment, that I thought it was an ideal time to do a garden tour video.

The early-mid Spring flowers have faded, and the late Spring ones are bursting into life everywhere I look; geraniums, ceanothus, alliums, irises, wallflowers, heuchera, hostas and so much more. This is a lush time, before the summer heat takes its toll.



Enjoy!
Rebecca xx

5 Must-Have Plants for Early Spring

Spring - a Time of Change

Spring is probably the time of most dramatic, glorious change in the garden. Whites of snow and frost, browns of mud and dead leaves are suddenly jewelled with rich, bright colour. Not only do early Spring flowers bring joy to us humans, they are also a vital nectar source for bees and other flying insects.

You'll notice I never grow 'double' flowered varieties of plants, purely because they make life too difficult for pollinators, either because the flowers are too complicated to be accessed by the insect, or the breeding process has removed the plants pollen and nectar producing organs.

Here's my Top Five Flowering Plants for Early Spring:

Hellebores (Helleborus hybridus)

These amazing perennials are commonly called the Lentern Rose. They have big tough leaves that are not attacked by slugs or snails. In the winter you can cut off all the leaves and in early spring the plant will throw up thick firm flower stems with fat buds that open into downwards facing cups. The petals are actually modified sepals, and come in a beautiful variety of colours from white to rich purple-black. They often have delicate spots, some have edges touched in a different colour, known as 'picote' (pic 1). 

Pic 1: Ashwood Nurseries Hellebous hybridus - Single Picote Photo by Pumpkin Becki

If you have different hellebores in your garden, they are likely to cross-pollinate, and the resulting seedlings will be your very own hybrid. The flowers last into May, and when pollinated, you'll be able to see the seed pods fattening and ripening over time.

They like a woodland/ semi-shaded position in the garden. They can survive dry or wetter conditions, but they don't really thrive. Once a plant is settled and growing well it won't appreciate being moved or divided, so make sure to give it a permanent location at it will bring you joy every winter/spring.

Ashwood Nurseries Helleborus hybridus - Single Primrose Yellow
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

Helleborus hybridus - single pink
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

Crocus

I have two varieties of Crocus in the garden at the moment, both are spring flowering (rather than autumn). I have a small clump of buttermilk yellow ones, and several clumps of delicate lilac ones. I'm sorry, I can't tell you want they are called.

Creamy Yellow Crocus
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

I love the way they hold their flowers carefully shut until the sun hits them and they fall wide open, revealing vivid orange stamen.

Pale lilac Crocus
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

Pulmonaria officinalis (aka Lungwort)

Another woodland perennial, the Pulmonaria is so surprisingly pretty. The emerald green leaves are decorated with silvery spots, and in spring, flower spikes explode into clusters of five petaled flowers in shades of pink, turning to rose, violet and then blue, as the plant changes the pH value within the petals from acidic to alkaline the longer they are open for.

Pulmonaria officinalis (Lungwort)
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

The common name Lungwort is centuries old, and comes from when it was grown for its medicinal properties. It was believed that because the leaves resembled the human lungs, they must be healing for illnesses involving the chest and respiratory system.

Whether that is true or now, they are definitely a valuable food source for bees and moths.

Cyclamen

I have two varieties of these tubers in my Woodland Garden, Cyclamen hederifolium and Cyclamen coum. I have tucked them right up near the trunks of the Sycamore and Horse Chestnut trees.

Cyclamen coum
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

The tuber should be planted quite shallow, so they are perfect in rooty soil where Spring bulbs couldn't be planted. Cyclamen coum flowers in the winter through to spring, and hederifolium flowers in late summer to autumn.

Primroses

This year my Primroses in the Woodland Garden have been in flower since Christmas - that's not right! It is one of the earliest plants to flower in the UK (just not quite Christmas-early)

I grow the native (UK) Primrose, Primula vulgaris, which forms mounds of buttery yellow flowers held just above deeply crinkled bottle green leaves. The flowers look delicate, but they withstand snow and frost, ready to soak up every drop of sunlight. They grow naturally in deciduous woodland, taking full advantage of the open canopy before the trees burst into leaf.

Primrose - Primula vulgaris

Being native, and single flowered, they produce lots easily accessible nectar and pollen. Growing guides suggest that they are best in damp shade, but mine are in dry partial shade/full sun and they thrive and naturalise beautifully there.

Iris Reticulata

I was once told (by someone who alleged himself to be a horticulturalist) that Iris Reticulata were impossible to get to flower after the first year and that I would have to replace the bulbs. I'm glad I didn't believe him in the slightest, as I now have lovely naturalised clumps that come up and flower year on year.

Iris reticulata
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

Iris reticulata is a very dainty form, reaching around 15cm high, and flowering in early spring. The leaves are narrow and almost as tall as the flowers. Don't expect Iris reticulata to be big and blousey like a bearded iris, you have to keep your eyes peeled amongst the leaf litter to spot these little beauties. The flowers aren't very long lasting, but across the clump, bulbs will flower at slightly different times, which extends the show considerably. Bees love them!

So there you have it, my top five early spring flowering plants. I hope you love them as much as I do, or maybe you have your own favourites, let me know in the comments xx

Time for a Change - Growing my blog and changing focus

In the blog beginning

Since I started this blog, so many things have changed in my life that I realised the blog no longer fitted it very well. Things that were important to me back then have gone, some have blossomed and grown.

"Pumpkin Becki's Little Allotment and Garden" was a way of recording all my successes and failures as I took on a brand new, never-before-cultivated allotment, in the village where we were also self-building a house on a 0.1 acre of land...yes, 0.1 acres.

Well, it's now 9 years since we poured the foundations, and our self-build project has become our perfect home. We were careful to begin work on the garden as soon as the mucky building site stage was over; we had a 'dream' list of things we wanted from our garden, and I think we've managed to achieve them:

• A greenhouse - check
• A Potting Shed - check
• Chickens in a fox-proof run - check
• A working kitchen garden - check
• A hive of honey bees
• A pretty, ornamental garden - it's a constant work in progress, but who's garden isn't!

Now, that's quite a lot to expect from such a small plot of land, especially when a large chunk of that is taken over by the dwelling. The biggest boon was removing the Leylandii trees, which by doing a deal with our lovely neighbours, gained us a couple more metres on the length of the back garden and so much more light and rainfall. The garden has thrived!

Successes and Failures

The success of the garden has lead to the downfall of the allotment though. I'm sad about that, and I still haven't officially given it back to the landowner, but I know that it has served it's purpose, helping me meet people in our new village, and giving me a wonderful grounding in growing edibles when I didn't have a suitable space at home.

Once the house was complete and the garden well underway, we allowed pets back into our lives. My husband Paul had grown up with cats, but I've always had small animals, especially guinea pigs and hamsters, and they don't mix terribly well with puss cats, neither does the busy main road on the other side of our fence. We also desperately wanted to keep chickens, ever since watching the Channel 4 'Escape to River Cottage' series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, so cats weren't really an option.

Positive changes

In the space of 9 years, we have had 7 guinea pigs, 4 hamsters, 3 chickens, some tropical fish and thousands of honey bees, and as we stand now, we have 10 pets in total.

So I started thinking about my blog, and why I struggled to keep it up to date. That's when I realised that it's because it doesn't fit our life anymore. We aren't aspiring allotmenteers now, I'm not trying to win tonnes of prizes at Garden Society shows with my flowers, veg and fruit. Huge chunks of time are now taken up caring for and spending time with our family of pets.

What do I do about that?

Well the gardening and allotmenting lessons I've learned are still very important to me, so I didn't want to end this blog, but I thought that with a slight name change, a freshening face-lift and development of subject matter, I could encourage my little blog to grow with me.

So welcome to "Pumpkin Becki - The story of our garden, built from nothing; and the ever growing collection of pets we share our lives with"

Rebecca xxx

The importance of beeing a beekeeper -Part 2

We become beekeepers

Bright and early on Saturday 2nd May, we drove to Mann Lake UK near Canterbury in Kent, to collect our nucleus of bees. In my mind a nucleus is something quite small, maybe I'm thinking of atoms or something. But a nucleus  (or nuc) of bees is actually approximately 5000 of these amazing little creatures, shut inside something that looks not much bigger than a shoebox!

Mann Lake UK is a fascinating place to visit. The shop is tucked away at the end of a trading estate on farmland, in a big farm building, overlooking beautiful orchards. Inside is an Aladdin's cave, filled to the rafters (literally) with beekeeping paraphernalia.

I felt a little daunted, but Mr PB walked straight in, gripping a shopping list of essential items. We were greeted by some friendly members of staff, and explained we had come to collect our bees. While they went off to get our nuc, we picked up a red hive tool, a pack of sting wipes, some Pro-Sweet Invert Bee Syrup, a Boardman Entrance Feeder and a Jack's Scale honey colour grader (feeling optimistic!).

Another couple offered us some advice on transporting the bees in the car, we have a hatchback, and I really didn't fancy a car full of bees should anything untoward happen on the half hour drive home! Thankfully it was uneventful, there was just a constant low buzz coming from the back seat of the car.

Suiting Up!
Note the jeans tucked into the socks :)

I keep a safe distance

As soon as we were home, Mr PB donned his beekeepers jacket with integral hood and veil (purchased from ebay), and took the nuc box out to the Top Bar Hive at the end of our garden.

Now, we don't have a particularly large garden, approximately  13m x 13m, and I had some serious concerns about the bees and whether I'd still be able to garden during 'flying hours'. Was the garden going to be inundated by a plague of bees? Was I going to be chased and stung every time I ventured outside minding my own business? But it was too late, and Mr PB really wanted this, so I couldn't object too hard.

We'd bought a nuc box rather than a 'package', which is a box of loose bees. With a nuc, the bees and Queen are already populating five 'frames', the sort that fit a National or WBC hive, contained in a special cardboard box with a bung plugging the entrance. The fledgling colony use the wax foundation to squirrel away collected stores, and there is brood already developing in the brood cells. The idea being that you simply, and with as little stress to the bees as possible, pop the nuc frames straight into your hive. But normally bees for Top Bar Hives are purchased in a package, and the bees are treated a bit like a collected swarm, being shaken into the top of the hive and left to start building their own comb from scratch, which is obviously a lot of work for a young colony. The main reason for this is to do with the comb bees make when left to their own devices. Natural comb is a beautiful 'U' shape, the bees form themselves into daisy chains, one bee hanging from the one before. Imagine the shape a piece of string when it is held between two points. It drapes in a beautiful  curve... that's what the bees do too, I've seen it!

Release the bees!

Top Bar hives are trapezoidal in cross section, which echoes the natural shape of the comb, but manmade frames are rectangular ... probably because it's easier to manufacture! But trying to fit a rectangle into a similarly sized trapezoid doesn't work, the frame can't sit down deep enough in the hive. The only option is to be drastic, and cut the bottom corners off the frame, pry the bottom and side bars away from the foundation, and using a bread knife trim the foundation until the remaining bar rests perfectly on the side walls of the hive and the remaining foundation is able to hang perfectly vertical.

Making themselves at home

But Mr PB was concerned that the bees had endured a long car journey, and probably wouldn't be very impressed about a 'chop & crop' job (demonstrated here by Phil Chandler the Barefoot Beekeeper)! After removing the bung from the nuc box, Mr PB made a space in between the 'bars' of the hive, and positioned the entire box inside. The bees got the hang of the entrance location and within minutes they were taking off, circling to orientate themselves, and then zipping off into the big blue sky.

After just a few hours Mr PB realised that the nuc box would need to be removed and the frames installed into the hive properly, but that was a job for tomorrow...

Continued in Part 3

The Importance of Beeing a Beekeeper - part 1

Building the Top Bar Hive kit

For years now, Mr PB has been reading about and talking about beekeeping.

You may remember that we bought a Beepol Bumble Bee lodge from Dragonfli, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of having a Bumble Bee colony in the garden. They were fascinating!

We were devastated when the lodge became infested with Wax Moth larvae and we lost all the bees. It would appear that other people had experienced the same issues though, because the following year when we ordered another Beepol, Dragonfli had added some Wax Moth deterrents to their range.

We tried, we really did. We installed the special anti-Wax Moth door, but again, the colony were overcome by the horrid larvae and the crazy silky webs they create. Dragonfli have since introduced a Wax Moth Concentrated Repellent, which you dilute and spray all over the hive every 2-3 weeks for full protection. We haven't tried it, so can't comment on it's effectiveness.

This year, Mr PB decided he was going to put all his research into practice, and build himself a Top Bar Hive, a more natural method of keeping honeybees which is championed here in the UK by Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper. I made contact with Phil via Twitter, and asked him if he felt there were any advantages to a Warre (pron: Wah rey) hive over a Horizontal Top Bar Hive. Phil was incredibly helpful, and we decided that we would stick with the horizontal type.



Hive on it's back, showing long bee entrance

Two ends on

After investigating the options and cost implications of either building from scratch, or building from a kit, Mr PB bought a cedar self assembly kit from Bees n Blossom on Ebay. It looked really good, but the instructions were absolutely impossible to follow, and building was a lengthy, sweary process!!



Mesh grille fitted to the bottom

             

Part of the ventilation underneath

These are some photos of the early stages, it took so long that I kind of lost interest (oops) and didn't bother to document any more than this.

Time was against us though, as this was the end of April (2015), and our bees were going to be ready for collection at the beginning of May!!

Eventually the darn thing was finished, and sited next to the greenhouse, it looked super!





Hive with legs on, showing the viewing panel on the front



Now on to Part 2...

Beepol Bumble Bee hive to be featured on TV

Earlier this week, I sent an email to the folks at Dragonfli (makers of the Beepol Garden Hive for Bumble Bees Beepol Garden Hive), telling them about my last blog post, and also about our discussions on the Vine regarding their product.

I got a very nice reply from Ian Bedford (Technical Director of Dragonfli), thanking me for letting them know that our Beepol arrived safely, and that we are talking positively about the Beepol here on my blog and on the Vine.

He also let me know that the Beepol will be featured on this Sunday's Horticultural Channel (Sky 166) The Horticultural Channel, which is really exciting. Our bees seem really happy in our garden, and I hope lots more people will take on a colony. I will certainly be spreading the word about the Beepol at every opportunity.

I love my Bumble Bees!!!

Bumble Bees in our garden

On Friday we took delivery of a very exciting parcel. It had been left with our kind neighbours the night before, and they were bemused and slightly scared by the warning labels plastered all over the outside of the box...

WARNING

LIVE BUMBLE BEES INSIDE BOX

HANDLE WITH CARE

I, on the other hand, was completely over-the-moon that this box had arrived safely, and I knew MrPB would be just as excited when he saw it. So what had we been buying?

MrPB opens the box of bees

The Villa is revealed

It's a Beepol hive and Lodge!! Beepol Garden Hive

...and inside...

The Beepol is a nest of happy healthy bumble bees ready to get to work in the garden

...our very own colony of Buff Tailed Bumble Bees (Bombus terrestris audax).

We read the instruction, and chose our site carefully and after placing the hive, we left it alone until dusk. We then followed the next set of instructions to prepare the hive for releasing the bees, and then waited until early the following morning before actually letting them go.

Saturday morning we went into the garden, full of anticipation. I stood a good distance away from the hive, and MrPB quietly went over and picked up the string that was attached to a foam bung in the top of the hive. He pulled the string, the bung came out with one bee attacking it, and then.........nothing.

We waited...

...and waited...

...and eventually we were rewarded with scenes like this...

The Bumble bees begin to emerge from the Villa

(One Bumble on the roof and one hovering outide the right hand entrance.)

Bumble bee reversing out of the Villa on its first foraging mission

Awesome! We sat watching them for ages. The most fascinating thing is the way they leave the hive.

Firstly, they come to the entrance (just like the photo above), then they turn around and reverse out of the hole. They take off, and inspect the entrance and the landing ledge. Then they inspect the hive itself and the things next to it. Then they start to fly in ever increasing circles, taking in landmarks and getting higher and higher, until....vroooom! they shoot off into the distance to go foraging! It's like they are memorising their way home.

We left them alone, and then at about 11.30 we went and had another sneaky peek, and were treated to scenes of our little Bumbles coming home, with fully laiden pollen sacs, after just four hour of foraging. Nature is amazing!!