Blog

I blog about nature in the Norfolk countryside and about my wildlife garden.

Frost on Winter Cherry Blossom

The Festive season brought with it some properly wintery weather at last with a bitter hoar frost, pea-soup freezing fog and a daytime temperature of -5.2c in our garden when I (very briefly!) popped out to take this photo the other day

Autumn's Golden Gown

"So fair and foul a day I have not seen..." grumbles the ill-fated Macduff at the beginning of Shakespeare's Macbeth Play. It felt a little like that in Norfolk this weekend

I enjoyed two dramatically different walks among birch trees within twenty four hours; my first a gloriously golden morning showing off Autumn's golden cloak in all its finery and then, courtesy of Storm Angus, a brief, soggy wind and rainswept excursion which made Litcham common feel very much like a blasted heath.

A wet spring and mild autumn lacking the autumn storms we've had of late has enabled us to enjoy a glorious long-lived golden autumn foliage season this year. But with harsher, stormier weather approaching it may be time to say one last goodbye to autumn's rich vivid beauty and face the cold embrace of stark, hollow Winter, who, after lurking in the wings for a while and is now stretching out its dark frosty talons.

Golden light shining through the autumn canopy onto fallen leaves

A beautiful mature silver birch tree cloaked in sunlit golden leaves

A storm-swept silver birch sapling looses its leaves under leaden skies

Amethyst Deceivers

Autumn time has its own slightly melancholy beauty, accompanying the aura of damp and decay are beautiful jewels, be they vivid russet and gold foliage, dewdrops on spider's webs, the first frost on wild grasses...but there are more subtle treasures to be found by the more sharp-eyed nature observer, such as this beautiful little amethyst deceiver toadstool.

Composition of this image is courtesy of John Stuart-Clarke who spotted the little acorn.

Often found near Beech trees, with whom it has a symbiotic relationship, Laccaria amethystina is a little woodland mushroom which takes its first name from the rich colour of the violet gemstone and its second because, though technicaly edible itself, its hue and shape is variable and it can look deceptively similar to a rather poisonous mushroom called Lilac Fibrecap.

Autumn Colours and Changing Clocks

Autumn seems to get later and later each year, perhaps a sign of the times in these days of global warming. The leaves here in Norfolk are only just colouring up, so to capture the mood of autumn here is a shot from my garden instead. It's a wild carrot seed head photographed against a backdrop of autumn flowering pink sedum in my butterfly and bee flower garden in gorgeous soft golden light we had yesterday afternoon before the clock change.

Wild carrot seedhead in autumn light.jpg

There's No Place Like Home

Its been a "Staycation" holiday week for me, and when you are a little under the weather and even the weather's a little under the weather, then the soft golden light at the end of the day and pretty little signs of autumn in the hedgerows and country lanes always give me a lift.

Here a few shots from an evening stroll along the Nar Valley Way. The local barn owl and muntjac deer made a few appearances too this week, though the owl remains camera shy.

A Final Flurry

Some friendly September weather did seem to bring out a small flurry of late emergences in some species who had a tough year like small coppers. Finger’s crossed for a better season next year!

A Late Small Tortoiseshell Summer

At last! Today, a gorgeously golden August bank holiday Monday, I was in Small Tortoiseshell heaven in my back garden with my Olympus 300m lens. With our wildflower meadow newly shorn, I could enjoy wonderful close up views of a late summer brood of Tortoisehell butterflies. They were a beautifully vivid, rich russet-orange colour as they flitted gracefully between the edge of our wildlife pond and our white buddleia, sweeping in to nectar on the pond side water mint. One butterfly cheekily nectared on a water mint flower so close to the water line that it had a narrow escape from becoming dinner with our rather noisy resident frog.

But I’m lucky to be enjoying this sight, because, despite this week's flurry of emergences, today the Butterfly Conservation Society issued a press release about their worrying decline. The Small Tortoisheshell’s population has plummeted by 73% since the 1970s.

Like many butterflies, habitat loss is an issue, but in addition the growing numbers of a parasitic fly, Sturmia bella may also be a contributory factor.

Due to their complex lifecycle, butterflies need caterpillar food plants for their larval stage, as well as nectar from flowers and fruit after they metamorphose into butterflies. Small Tortoiseshells, like several of the nymphalidae butterfly family, use nettles as their caterpillar host plant.

Gardens are increasingly playing a vital role as a habitat in our rapidly changing environment, so if you are a gardener, allowing a generous patch of nettles somewhere sunny at the edge of your garden really could help a struggling butterfly to recover, and when emerging Small Tortoiseshells grace your flower borders, make late summer days in your garden even more beautifully golden.

Silver Sea Lavender Skies

Sometimes muted grey skies can be a blessing in disguise, as was the case with this shot. High contrast full summer light can be tricky to contend with during the day. This soft pastel palette of sea lavender in Holkham bay was only possible thanks to some heavy leaden grey cloud skies creating soft even light conditions. Taken with the new Olympus 300mm pro-lens.

Low Mow Flower Lawns

Creative Low Maintenance Alternatives to Paving or Astroturfing your Lawn

With our our increasingly busy lives and long commutes, many people have come to dread the idea of spending precious family and leisure time mowing their lawns every week in high summer and look for alternative solutions. So much so that sales of block paving, pea shingle and even artificial plastic astro-turf are soaring. But what is the best option for our health and the environment? Is there a solution that is both low maintenance and eco-friendly as well as being aesthetically pleasing?

Concerns with block paving as an alternative to grass turf

Traditionally, those suffering lawn mower fatigue looked to block paving and over the years many a front urban garden vanished in favour of parking driveways, but in recent years flooding has become a real issue, particularly in urban areas due the sheer amount of lost drainage due to block paving in of gardens. According to a report by the Committee on Climate change, in the 5 years to 2013, around 55 million square meters of block paving was installed in England, 92% of which was non-permeable. As climate change started to take its toll and our British weather became more volatile the issue became increasingly important. So much so that in a bid to halt the trend, official planning permission is now required to install non permeable paving with no drainage.

Interestingly hard landscaping may not be just be bad for the eco-system and wildlife but also, it's been discovered in research studies, for our human psychological and physical well being. Numerous studies have found positive correlations between green spaces and our mental health and negative links with concrete jungle urban environments. So wildlife aside, installing hard landscaping may also not be the most healthy way to get the most out of our precious outdoor space for our own psychological wellbeing. The good news is that there are some beautiful, natural, wildlife-friendly alternatives out there, that are far more attractive than block or shingle hard landscape replacements and yet are vastly easier and less effort to maintain than a traditional turf lawn.

Issues with artificial lawns as an alternative to grass turf

Recently a new kid arrived on the lawn replacement block. Artifical turf. Superficially an attractive option. Cheaper, also maintenance free, permeable and, being green plastic kind of natural looking from a distance. Sales sky rocketed. Sometimes made of recycled rubber and recycling's good right? Well... no, not exactly. Plastic is never the good guy and buying and laying plastic imitation lawns in your garden can still create lots of environmental problems.

Experts say artificial lawns are a real threat to wildlife, and on closer inspection don't have eco-friendly credentials. They consume fossil fuels to manufacture and many are shipped long distance so have a large carbon footprint and of course, being essentially plastic, don't biodegrade and eventually pollute the environment. The issue of habitat loss for burrowing bees, worms and other insects that birds rely on for food is a major and growing problem in an increasingly intensively built urban environment. More worryingly some potential health concerns have been raised about the safety of some materials used, there have been claims of materials being used in them potentially causing cancer or other serious health risks (see “further reading” section below for links). So, on closer inspection the plastic turf alternative doesnt seem to tick the human health box either.

Low mow flower lawns as an alternative to grass turf

Paving and artifical grass aside, varity is the spice of life in the ecosystem and, while better than man made coverings, a standard turf or grass lawn is a monoculture habitat that offers relatively poor biodiversity. Aside from the odd snail or earthworm for blackbirds or crows to forage it has little ecological benefit to wildlife.

Aesthetically, aside from being green rather than synthetic, lawns are also pretty bland don't offer a great deal of visual stimulation for the human eye either. As awareness grows of flooding and ecosystem impact and potential health issues around artificial surfaces, people are starting to look into greener, healthier alternatives that avoid resorting to higher maintenance traditional turf lawns. At the same time wildlife gardening is increasing in popularity as we become more conservation minded.

With a little imagination a dull lawn could be transformed from a mowing and weeding nightmare into a low maintenance artistic and aromatic patchwork quilt of low growing wildflowers rich in biodiversity that will shelter and feed bees, insects and butterflies. And require far less summer mowing maintenance to boot. Many of the plants suggested are native or long naturalised so will cope with our long dry summer weather, or shade far better than garden centre grass mixes will do. And if you need to install a driveway there are many hexagon shaped green-driveway options to use with the low mow flower ideas below.

Low Mow Flowering Lawn Ideas

Selfheal and White Clover make an attractive, low maintenance wildlife friendly alternative to a traditional plain turf lawn

Probably the star performer for an alternative to turf lawn is white clover, perhaps with a sprinkling of purple-blue selfheal and speedwell dropped in, but there are a whole host of options including the lovely idea of fragrant and herbal flower lawns grown with chamomile, thyme or mint, an innovation first dreamed up by the Elizabethans.

Depending on what flower lawn mix you sow, you may still need just one or two mows on a high setting in spring, but from then on you can leave the sward completely alone through the main summer period, sit back and enjoy the flowers before mowing again once or twice in autumn.

Below is a list some of the best known low growing flower-lawn options to go for sorted by colours, but many other wild flowers will adapt to low growing and flowering height with an early mowing regime. You could even plant in some spring bulbs for extra colour.

Blue / White / Pink Flowers for Alternative Low Flowering Lawns

White clover (trifolium repens, native, flowers: white, Jun-Oct)- a star lawn alternative, tough and resilient and simply wonderful for garden bees. It is a caterpillar host plant for 14 moth species, in particular burnet, heath, mother shipton and silver y moths. It has a prolonged flowering season and the leaves of this legume stay green during the height of summer unlike most lawns. Note that its relative red clover grows much taller than the white.
Selfheal (prunella vulgaris, native, flowers: blue/purple Jun-Oct ) – a good companion to clower, this semi-evergreen herb with beautiful violet flower spikes can flower well into October. As its name suggest, the herb has a long history of medicinal use for healing wounds.
Germander Speedwell (veronica chamaedrys, native, flowers: blue Apr-Jun) A host plant for the heath fritillary butterfly, this variety of speedwell displays bright blue flowers in spring and its name references its historic status as a good luck charm for travellers, to speed them well on their way. Other creeping speedwell varieties include Common Field Speedwell (v. persica) , Grey Field Speedwell (v. polita) Green Field Speedwell (v . agrestis)
Ground Ivy (glechoma hederacea, native, flowers: lilac, Mar-Jun) nothing to do with its larger relative it looks a little like bugle and is low growing spring flower oft seen with primroses.
Bugle (ajuga reptans, native, flowers: purple Apr-Jun) a member of the mint/dead nettle family with purple flowers on little stalks in spring
Yarrow (achillea millefolium, flowers: white to pink, Jun-Oct) a pretty feathery leaved plant in the daisy family with erect flower spikes that flower low with mowing. Great for butterflies and plume moths.
Sweet Violet (viola odorata, native, flowers: lilac to deep purple, Mar-May) low growing spring flowers. Sweet violet spreads via rhizomes. Its relative common dog violet flowers a little later.

Yellow / Orange / Red Flowers for Alternative Low Flowering Lawns

Buttercups and speedwell can be low growing alternatives to a turf lawn

Bird’s foot trefoil (lotus corniculatus, native, flowers: yellow to orange, May-Sep) – Not everyone’s cup of tea with its vivid yellow “bacon and egss” but this is an excellent moth and butterfly caterpillar host plants used by Common Blue, Green Hairstreak, Dingy Skippers and Clouded Yellow butterflies.
Creeping Buttercup (ranunulus repens, native, flowers: yellow, May-Jul) one of Britains native buttercups. Leaves are comparatively large and it does have quite a vigorous creeping habit so be sure you want plenty of glossy yellow flowers before including it in a mix.
Daisy (bellis perennis, native, flowers: white-yellow, Apr-Oct) Every perfect flower lawn should have some. No British summer is complete without at least one daisy chain and a game of “she loves me, she loves me not”.
Scarlet Pimpernel (anagallis arvensis, native, flowers: red, May-Oct) Made famous by the French rebel, this is a delicate tiny little red flower that opens in the morning when the sun shines and will close up in less clement weather.
Dandelion (taraxacum officinale, native, flowers: yellow Apr-Oct), a marmite plant hated by many traditional gardeners for its habit of invading lawns, but a whole field full can be a sight to behold.
Cat’s Ear (hypochaeris radicata, native, flowers: yellow May-Oct), often confused with dandelions as it alsow grows as a rosette, but its more delicate and low growing with flowers on spikes and is very popular with meadow butterflies like skippers and meadow browns and gatekeepers.

Fragrant or Herbal Flowers for Alternative Low Level Lawns

Creeping Thyme (thymus serpyllum, naturalised, flowers:May-Aug ) – a fragrant creeping herb that originated in the mediterranean and was brought to Britain by the Romans.
Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile, native, flowers: Jun-Aug) – another aromatic plant used for tea, this herb became the height of fashion in the Elizabethan era and it was the Elizabethans who first came up with the idea of planting it en masse as a feathery soft lawn fragrant underfoot. A non flowering cultivar is also available.
Corsican Mint (Mentha requienii, naturalised, flowers: purple Jul, Aug) – Introduced from Corsica, Sardinia a low growing mint family plant.

Green / Non Flowering Low Level Lawns For Shade

Moss (bryophyta)- overlooked and underrated, particularly good for shady areas, it is a gorgeous rich green and bouncy underfoot.

Traditional Wildflower Meadows

If you don’t need a low level lawn-like effect and the height of plants is no issue you could even consider a wildflower meadow patch. For the extra effort of an annual cut you could grow a traditional natural grass and wildflower meadow with endless choice of taller flowers. A summer wildflower meadow mix has a cutting regime timed as a hay cut in late summer. Or if you love to see birds in your garden you could consider a dense flower meadow mix for birds and bees. These are designed to be left overwinter for seeds and require a late winter cut around February after the birds have foraged the seedheads.

Abandon your both your lawn mower and the mortar!

So there are a whole host of options that can mean your mower is left to gather dust in the garage most of the year, leaving you free to enjoy your low flowering non turf lawn for its natural beauty and the wildlife species it brings into your garden. Not all lawn alternatives will tolerate heavy footfall, so a little thought research and tailoring is required to find the right option and perfect blend for your area.

But whatever you do – throw that block paving brochure into the recycling and start growing an exciting low maintenance beautiful space for wildlife!

Red Campion and white Daisies surround the bird bath in the Old Rose Garden at Nar Cottage

Of Red Admirals and Queen Anne's Lace

A slightly bizarre blog post title, I know. The connection is that these were the first two subjects that I photographed with the newly launched Olympus 300mm f4.0 pro lens. In old money that gives an effective reach equivalent to some 600mm, a wildlife photographers dream lens. But I wondered if a bokeh was possible, whether the images would really be as sharp as Olympus claimed, and whether the lens might be suitable for long lens macro photography.

Some pretty wild carrot flower seedheads, known as Queen Anne's lace, were my first attempted subject. Immediately I took the lens cap off I had a nasty shock. The lens simply wouldn't focus. The focus point refused to stay still, it bouncedaround lly all over the place. Feeling deflated and not a little seasick from the circular motion I went to do a little investigation and realised that I needed to upgrade my camera's firmware to support the latest in camera focus stabilisation.

That done. the camera's focus improved dramatically and behaved beautifully again. I finished taking my shot of the wild carrots' dainty seedheads and was pleasantly suprised at the sharpness and bokeh I that was able to achieve.

That still left the question of whether, with the predictably long minimum focus distance of 1.4m, the 300mm lens would be at all suitable for larger less tolerant butterflies and dragonflies, some of my all time favourite macro subjects to photograph.

An obliging red admiral butterfly very much preoccupied with nectaring on my garden privet hedge allowed me to put the lens through its paces. Because of the long reach, it was a little challenging to get the focus spot on and the 1.4m minimum focus distance was, as expected a real constraint, so I am still dreaming of a nice 100mm f4.0 macro with a minimum focal range more like 40cm. Even so I did get some lovely shots rich with detail and could see this lens working nicely with tree top species.

A Spotty New Dragonfly

The Nar Cottage wildlife garden is starting to become quite mature now, so we were really excited today to spot a new species to the Garden! Our first ever Four-spotted Chaser dragonfly (Libellula Quadrimaculata) was perched up by our our wildlife pond, looking glamourous as he posed. We were even more delighted when he suddenly started zooming round and hooked up with a mate who then started ovipositing, so hopefully in a few years time we may see some more!

Although common in the UK, this was only my second ever encounter with the species, which I first met at Sturmpshaw Fen in June 2012. According to the British Dragonfly Society, Four-spotted Chasers prefer shallower bodies of water with good emergent vegetation and areas of clear water. Named after the striking dark spots half way along its wings, there is also a rare form called prenubia that has an additional dark mark on the end of the wings. Both males and females have a similar appearance and their dark appearance makes them well-suited to Britains cooler climate. On the continent the species is cyclically migratory and occasionally vast swarms can be seen. While this is very rare in the UK, the species is a wanderer, which has no doubt aided its distribution.

Four-spotted-chaser-dragonfly-on-reedmace

Noble Emerald and Gold

Butterflies are having a bad year so far and are thin on the ground, so I have been entertaining myself with other little beasties.

This beautiful, iridescent emerald-coloured beetle is a member of the flower beetle family with a rather grand, royal sounding latin name Oedemera nobilis. It has several fun but less flattering English names too such as thick-legged flower beetle or swollen-thighed flower beetle, although only the females have the fat thighs.

Despite their imposing looking mandibles, adult emerald flower beetles are herbivorous and feed on flower pollen and nectar. This female thick-legged flower beetle is pictured on a Common Rock Rose (Helianthemum Nummularian) up at Ringstead Downs in North Norfolk.

Kiri