The park behind my house is a scruffy, neglected space with a large playing field full of craters made by dogs, a children’s play area, a scout hut and masses of overgrown borders. A small copse runs through the middle, where poplar trees rub shoulders with guerilla-planted cordylines and a rogue Scots pine. There are smatterings of garden escapees, helped along by those whose gardens back on to the park, along with oddities such as gnomes and a ceramic hedgehog. On the other side is more lawn, along with huge overgrown rose beds, an area of long grass and brambles, and a nettle patch. It’s used by a huge community of people, including teenagers and adults without gardens, who use the space for sunbathing and socialising, people with children and/or dogs, people who feed the birds and people who don’t like others feeding the birds. There are fetes, children’s events, dog parties and weeding and litter-picking sessions. There are late-night gatherings and little ‘balloon’ dens with discarded nitrous oxide canisters scattered among the trees. There are hedgehogs and birds, butterflies and other wildlife, who are often overlooked.
It used to be better looked after but cuts to council budgets mean it now has just a few big trims a year, with no detail given to the weedy rose beds or the crater-pocked playing field. This means brambles and nettles have free rein, which is good for the hedgehogs and butterflies but risky as we never know when the council will come and cut them back. Plus, they are the source of many complaints. It’s hard managing a space that is used by so many people for so many things. But we get along.
Today I’m here for the nettles, which I need to harvest daily for the caterpillars I am raising in the kitchen. I have an old supermarket shopping bag and a pair of scissors. I turn the corner and see two men in high-vis jackets, one on a ride-on mower and the other hacking into brambles with a strimmer. Of course, after weeks of nothing, today everything will be cut back, tidied up and taken away. I curse, silently. I should have taken those caterpillars.
‘Hiya.’
The man with the strimmer stops his work, and I try not to look at the debris in his wake. I ask if he will be cutting back the nettles where the caterpillars are, and he says yes.
‘When?’ I ask.
‘Within the hour,’ he replies.
I tell him about the caterpillars.
‘Show me,’ he says.
I take him to the nettles and he tries to tell me they’re the larvae of the brown tail moth, a native species with very fine hairs that can cause skin irritation and breathing difficulties in some people. I say no, these are small tortoiseshells, they have declined by 75 per cent in the last 50 years and, besides, brown tails don’t deserve to die because some people, who are unlikely to ever go near nettles, are allergic to them. He sighs and says he will have a word with his colleague on the lawnmower but, really, there’s nothing they can do.
I get it, I really do. The grass needs mowing and the paths need to be kept clear. And with fewer resources these jobs are done less frequently but more harshly. And the council is trying – when they mow the grass they leave longer patches so clover can flower to feed the bees. But no one ever thinks about the caterpillars.
To think I was beating myself up for taking caterpillars from nettles just two days previously. To think I had considered taking these ones and decided not to. The small tortoiseshell, a once-common and easily recognisable species, has seen populations collapse since the 1970s, and boy do we know it. If I had a penny for every ‘Where have the butterflies gone?’ question I’d had at talks, I would be very rich. Yet here we are, in one of the UK’s 27,000 public parks, killing them. And it’s not just this park, is it? It will be all of them.
Can we not dedicate areas to other species who use the park as well? Can we not manage habitats so the wildlife uses the bits intended for them and avoids those that aren’t? The first brood of small tortoiseshell butterflies lays eggs in early summer, and the offspring of this spring batch mate and lay eggs of the second brood from mid- to late summer. The egg-laying females seek out fresh, young nettles to lay their eggs on. So if they’re cut and regrow they become even more attractive to butterflies. A nettle patch, therefore, which is cut in midsummer by the council, is a death-trap, an ecological dead end. I wish we could do better for our wildlife. I wish we could tell the species that make all of this unwelcome ‘growth’ their home, that there are better places to lay their eggs. ‘Look,’ I could say to them, ‘Not there, it’s too near the path, but this nettle patch is for you! And when you’re done I will cut the nettles back and they will regrow and be perfect for your babies. Welcome!’
I start picking caterpillars off the plants and dropping them into my supermarket bag, as the man on the lawnmower gets into position. He has spoken with his colleague, he seems friendly. I resist the urge to talk to him, too, but I’m grateful for the space he’s giving me to save these butterflies.
Caterpillars go through growth stages, known as instars, and with each instar the caterpillar grows before shedding its skin. The small tortoiseshell goes through five such stages. Because they hang out together, in groups of up to 100, the shed skins are very obvious – indeed, sometimes the first signs of caterpillars on nettles are not the caterpillars themselves but the ghosts of earlier instars. When I raise them in my little mesh tent I always know when they’re about to shed a skin; they stop eating and move around less. I like to imagine them all crying out in Caterpillar: ‘My tummy hurts! I don’t feel well.’ And then, suddenly, they are bigger, differently patterned and HUNGRY. ‘Hello, new beans,’ I say to them. ‘Feeling better?’
Annoyingly, after spending most of their time huddled together, eating en masse and making collective decisions to move from one nettle tip to the next, when they reach their fifth instar they disperse, where they appear to sunbathe on nettle leaves for a few days before climbing to a suitable spot and pupating into a chrysalis. I suppose this is an evolutionary tactic – a predator would have a hard job finding them all, dispersed as they are along a huge bank of luscious leafy leaves. How do I know this? Because here I am, picking through nettles to save 100 caterpillars that are not, conveniently, in the same spot.
I walk along, methodically plucking caterpillars off leaves and dropping them into my bag. I count them as I go. The first 27 are easy to find. But there are more, I know there are. I go back to where I started, crouch down, look under leaves. I find another five, then six, seven. The man on the lawnmower busies himself with a little patch of grass by the roses. A final sweep and I have 41. That’s 41 caterpillars that would otherwise have had the chop. I collect a rogue red admiral and a few mother of pearl moth caterpillars as I go, then cut nettles into the bag to sustain them all. My hands tingle with a thousand stings. I pocket the scissors, wave thanks to the man on the lawnmower and take my leave. I’ll return later to assess the damage.
At home I arrange nettles in the little mesh tent, and watch Sunday’s caterpillars climb on to them and start eating. I release the red admiral and mother of pearl larvae on to the nettles in the garden – my small patch will be enough for them. I recount my quarry, and am pleased that I still have 41, there were no escapees on the way home. I gently tip these into the same mesh tent and watch as they, too, climb on to the nettles, newly incarcerated but safe. I apologise to them and try to explain that they’ll be free again soon. I leave them to get on with the rest of their day and make a note to buy another, bigger, mesh tent.
Later, I return to the park to see how much has been stripped back. I’m pleased to see the nettles have had the lightest of trims – possibly because I kicked up such a fuss. I walk along and find a garden tiger caterpillar wondering where its home has gone and I scoop it up to take back to the garden. The rest of the park has been scalped, one whole nettle patch has been razed completely. There will be lush new growth in a couple of weeks. Just in time for the next generation of egg-laying butterflies to meet a grisly end at the hands of more men with strimmers and mowers.
I wish caterpillars were viewed more favourably. I wish they were prioritised, like bees and butterflies, that gardeners and park-maintenance folk were as happy to see little grubs eating their leaves as they are a pollinator visiting a flower. We are trained, the world over, to see caterpillars as pests, to pick them off when we see them, to spray and squish them. We need to change our mindset, to recognise the importance of them, both in their own right and as food for so many other species further up the food chain. These tiny eating machines that grow fat and transform, like magic, into a beautiful butterfly. These fat, moist grubs that fill the bellies of baby birds, of frogs and toads, of hedgehogs. One baby blue tit needs to eat 100 caterpillars a day for the first three weeks of its life – who are we to deny them a meal?
Caterpillars represent hope, abundance, promise, new life, while butterflies are a celebration of life itself. Can you not see that, when a butterfly flies over your garden fence? Do you not yell ‘Butterfly!’ when you spot your first of the year? Every time a caterpillar is removed from a plant, a bit of love, hope and magic is taken from the world. This not only denies food for wildlife but also joy for people. Who are we to take that away? To kill love, hope and magic, when surely there’s never been a greater need for more?
Slow worm, Anguis fragilis
The slow worm is not a snake but a lizard without legs. A lizard that has eyelids and can blink. Males are a dull brown and females are golden, often with go-faster stripes down the sides. They bask to warm up in the morning, beneath the shelter of logs or other items (some people lay down slates or corrugated iron for them to rest beneath). They eat slugs and other small invertebrates but, if you’re a gardener, the most important thing you need to know about slow worms is that they eat slugs. They eat slugs!
They are common across the British Isles except for the Scottish islands and the whole of Ireland. I rarely see them in the garden but when I do, they are resting beneath the old roof slate I have laid down for them at the back of the border. They also like the habitat pile and the log pile beneath the bench. They venture out, in late spring, to look for a mate. I have found slow worms trying to cross the road, slinking across the lawn, heading out of the garden down the twitten. Mating looks uncomfortable but who are we to know? The male clasps on to the female’s neck and holds fast while they roll around together, for up to 10 hours. In common with two other lizard species, the common lizard and sand lizard, slow worms incubate their eggs internally, which then hatch out while still inside their mother so she appears to ‘give birth’ to her young. She seeks out warm places to bring her young into the world, such as the top of plastic compost bins and the toasty centre of open compost heaps.
To garden for slow worms is to open up the space for them, ensure they can come and go as they please. Compost your kitchen and garden waste, either in plastic bins or open heaps (or both!) and avoid turning it until early autumn. To see if they’re living among you, the best way to find them is to lay down a piece of slate or corrugated iron over long grass or straw; they won’t be able to resist.
Slow worms are often found, and tormented, by cats. Ensure, then, that they have plenty of hiding places to escape to, that the log pile, compost heap and piece of slate are distributed evenly around the garden. If they can nip to safety quickly they have more chances of survival. The cats will have to play with something else.
June
I steal a few hours, alone, in the garden. It’s unusually quiet, the neighbours must be away. But the borders are quiet, too. There’s a few bees but not many, and I wonder if the cold, dry conditions a few weeks ago hit them just as they were starting their nests, or if the dry conditions generally have been too much for them. It’s eerie. There are few hoverflies and other insects, too, there’s none of the ‘hum’ of life that I would expect in early June, when things typically start getting noisy. But there is some life and I hold on to it, hard.
The pond is fuller since we had rain, and covered in duckweed, which I can’t remove because the tadpoles are too small to deal with the onslaught of being hoofed out and then chucked back in again (I can do this from July). I focus on other things: I tie clematis, honeysuckle and hops into the trellis, trim off wayward stems and check them for caterpillars – nothing. I trim the hedge, which has only just started looking like a hedge, and check the prunings for caterpillars – nothing. I cut back bindweed that’s allowed to live in the twitten but is not allowed to grow through the gate and strangle my hedge. Two caterpillars! Phew. But, sorry. I fetch a clothes peg and carefully attach the leaves to some living bits of bindweed so the caterpillars can eat them, instead. I check everything again and then throw my clippings on the habitat pile between the shed and the wall, where everyone lives but me.
The garden starts to look completely wild at this time of year. I mow the ‘lawn’ until May so the mining bees can use the short grass, and then set it free. It took a while for things to gather pace this year because it’s been so dry but it’s picking up speed now. The grass is knee-high in places and the borders are busy – ornamental poppies rub shoulders with foxgloves and alliums, along with the last of the honesty.
I collect seeds from white deadnettle to scatter elsewhere. I reduce the height of the knapweed around the pond so I can still see the pond. I ‘Chelsea chop’ the dusky cranesbill, (Geranium phaeum) so it flowers again, and the white comfrey so it doesn’t produce seed. I find baby frogs and photograph them. Hi!
I make tea and lie on the bench, a treat I rarely allow myself. In the sky I count 10 swifts flying overhead and far above them a buzzard being escorted away by six of the finest herring gull bouncers. Herring gulls are such good parents, such fine neighbours. I think of them, happily, as I fall asleep, and wake 10 minutes later with a jolt. More gardening? Why not?
I planted the front garden to be a riot of colour and wow! People stop to comment on it. It was covered in plastic and pebbles when I moved in and now provides food for pollinators all year round. There are primroses, crocuses and lungwort for the spring bees, then mountain cornflowers, Macedonian scabious (Knautia macedonica), dyer’s chamomile and viper’s bugloss for the summer crowd. Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) and rudbeckia for the autumn stragglers and a bit of winter honeysuckle for anyone who wakes up or is disturbed during the cold months. It’s a succession of pollen and nectar, carefully managed, not too tidy. Except there’s a problem.
Honeywort (Cerinthe purpurascens) is a beautiful hardy annual with fleshy, glaucus leaves and purple tubular flowers. A member of the borage family, it produces good levels of nectar, plus being Mediterranean, it’s used to dry conditions. It’s therefore a brilliant bee plant and the fact that it still produces good levels of nectar in periods of drought makes it extremely useful for dry gardens (or newly dry gardens due to climate change). Most flowers stop producing nectar in drought so honeywort can help them through. When bees visit its blooms they make a tinny buzzing sound, which makes me happy. Lots and lots of bees love honeywort, which makes it produce lots and lots of seed, which makes it produce lots and lots of new plants, which attract lots and lots of bees. See where I’m going here?
It would be an understatement to say the honeywort is extremely happy in my front garden, indeed, it’s completely taken over this year and nothing else has been able to grow. I’ve removed a few plants but, knowing how much the bees love it, I haven’t taken too much; it’s not nice to cut down plants when you know the bees love them and you know they will carry on feeding the bees when others won’t, especially when conditions are so dry. Instead I vowed to cut the plants back after they’d flowered but before they’d set seed, which seemed like a reasonable compromise.
I can tell when honeywort starts seeding as the leaves lose their beautiful blue hue and the seeds are huge – you can see them a mile off. It’s not a bad time for it to go: the hairy-footed flower bees, which are active from March to May, have pretty much finished for the season and the bumbles, if there were any, have plenty else in the garden to feast from. But still, it never feels good. I climb over the short wall and start chopping. The lack of bees makes the job easier, and soon I have a large pile of plants. I feel like I’m chopping down a forest – it takes a good hour and then five good armfuls to clear it through the house to the habitat pile at the back. But what I’m left with is heartbreaking; I was expecting to find little stunted clumps of chamomile and catmint beneath it, desperate for a bit of light. The plan was to give them a good drink so they could grow and fill the space left by the now-absent honeywort. But there’s barely anything at all, just some viper’s bugloss and Macedonian scabious that have seen much better days, and a few clumps of lungwort. The rest has died under the shadow of blue glaucous leaves. There’s no honeywort, and now there’s barely anything in its place, either.
To add insult to injury, as I pile it up at the side of the shed, a bumblebee finds it and starts taking the last of the nectar from its flowers. I sit, deflated, on the hedgehog feeding station. I’m being oversensitive because of the lack of rain; I’m taking it personally as if I were the dry garden, as if I were the empty skies. But the reality is that I’ve just removed a potentially important source of nectar during a drought and have nothing to offer in its place. I feel awful.
The bee takes her fill and buzzes off, for the last time, because the flowers will have dried out by tomorrow. I remind myself of all the things in bloom in the back, which I’m hydrating with grey water. There really isn’t a shortage of pollen and nectar in these parts. But the front garden is a mess, with virtually nothing growing in it. I’m sad but also mindful of an opportunity: what can I do with the space now?
