Will someone please tell me what's wrong with our garden! We've been developing it since the builder handed over of the house a year and a half ago, and we've planted it - or so we thought - so it would be as insect- and bird-friendly as possible. Just at the moment the insects' food plants include michaelmas daisies, verbena, buddleia, lupins and big white daisies, amongst many others, yet yesterday afternoon, with the temperature at 23C, light winds and bright sunshine, all we could attract in the way of butterflies were....
....one red admiral on the buddleia - we have about nine buddleia of various colours in the garden - and....
....a peacock on the michaelmas daisies - we have three large clumps of them in the garden - a passing white and, joyfully....
....a painted lady, only the second we've seen this year, on the.... gorse!
It was also noticeable that there were few other insect groups on the flowers. In previous houses we've had, the michaelmas daisies have been crowded with bees, hover flies and other insects, but not here.
I've been racking my brain for an explanation. Could it be that our garden, in the middle of a relatively new housing development, is surrounded by an insect desert, so they simply don't come this way? Or is it that this part of Sutherland is experiencing a real insect crisis?
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