I’ve been an enthusiastic participant in ‘No Mow May’ for a couple of years now, and ‘Let it Bloom June’ too, for that matter.  The ex-lawns are shaping up nicely as mini meadows, the one behind the house a blaze of colour currently dominated by Red and White Campion, Dame’s Violet, Creeping Buttercups and Ox-eye daisies. I’ve been planting out plugs grown from seeds collected last year so am hoping Greater Knapweed and Ribbed Melilot will soon be joining the fray.

Twenty five years ago, when we bought the house new, we put some topsoil down in the back garden before seeding it with grass, partly because the clay beneath meant that we had a lot of standing water, which very quickly turned into mud when the children played on it. The ‘lawn’, which has got increasingly diverse over time, soon sorted out the standing water problem.  Even better than lawn, the current tall growth means that the back garden stays green when much of the mown grass around is starting to look distinctly parched, after several weeks with no rain. Some of the shorter wildflowers I enjoyed here last year, though, have been swamped by the taller plants – both Crosswort and Bugle have struggled to compete.

The front ‘lawn’ is rather different – much shorter grass with a lot of moss, which is very dry in summer but damp in winter.  I suspect there is a lot of builder’s rubble just below the surface in this area, which was turfed when we bought the house new.  Because it is so dry, the grass struggles a bit here and so other small plants, such as, Black Medick, Daisies and Thyme-leaved Speedwell have found their way in.  I’ve planted out some Bird’s-foot Trefoil and Meadow Crane’s-bill plugs as well as a couple of precious Small Scabious grown from seed and am hoping these will be convinced they’ve found there way into some nice limestone grassland, and thrive!

So, what has all this meant for biodiversity? Last year I had recorded some 40 or so species of moths in my garden light trap by mid-July, and was smugly putting that down to the wilding of my garden. This year, however, despite the luxuriant garden vegetation I’ve only had a handful of moths in the trap – single specimens of ten or so new species and some familiar ones from last year.  New species have included Common Quaker, Hebrew Character, Clouded Drab, Lychnis, Clouded-bordered Brindle, Herald, Streamer, Scalloped Hazel, Mottled and White-spotted Pugs and Grey Pine Carpet moths.

Several of these species, including the Pugs, Grey Pine Carpet and Streamer, are in the large family Geometridae, with broad, triangular forewings and light, slender bodies. The adult moths sometimes drink moisture but they don’t need to refuel frequently with nectar. The Geometridae were also well represented in my trap last year.  The Herald moth is in the Erebidae and the others are in the Noctuidae – a family of migratory moths, whose adults do feed on nectar, tree sap or aphid honeydew, en route.  Honeysuckle and Campions, both abundant in my garden, are important food sources for some of these moths. 

Although insect numbers around the world are widely understood to have fallen catastrophically over recent decades (see the 2022 meta-analysis by Outhwaite et al.), it’s not just me that thinks there are fewer insects than ever around this year. Even if anecdotal, it does feels very worrying to witness this happening in real time, in my own garden.

Since 2021, the charity Buglife has carried out an annual citizen science survey of flying insects (Bugs Matter), by getting people to record the number of insects splats on their car number plates for individual journeys made between June and August and turning this into a ‘splats per mile’ value.  They are fortunate to have baseline data in the form of a similar study done by the RSPB in 2004.  The 2021 Bugs Matter survey showed a 59 % decrease in insects sampled, across the UK,since 2004 but the news last year was even worse – the report released by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife (Bugs Matter 2022 Full Technical Report), showed a 64% decrease in numbers since 2004.

Obviously you can’t rely on a single year’s data to draw definitive conclusions, especially after 2022’s record summer temperatures, and this trend was not consistent across the whole of the UK.  The figures for Scotland actually showed an uptick between 2021 and 2022, contrary to the decline in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. 

Heat map Heat map of mean splat rate per mile for each region across the survey years from the Technical Report (very limited data collection in 2019)

However Bugs Matter’s broader findings are consistent with widely reported declines in insect populations globally. Until this last week or so we haven’t had particularly hot weather but we have had very little rain, and that is a problem for lots of insects, as well as the plants on which they live and feed. Moths and butterflies which overwinter as caterpillars suffer if host plants struggle or shed their leaves early to avoid drought, so another possibility is that large numbers of insect larvae died in last year’s drought, leaving fewer to pupate into adults this spring.

As well as taking part in the citizen science project, Buglife’s website has lots of good ideas for things which individuals can do to try and help reverse the decline in insect numbers, though I have to say a lot seems to depend on much bigger issues around our changing climate.  Five things to do to reverse insect decline – Buglife includes several no-brainers for me – I’ve long eschewed peat-based compost and insecticides, and untidiness comes very naturally…

Outhwaite C.L., McCann P. and Newbold T. (2022) Agriculture and climate change are reshaping insect biodiversity worldwide. Nature. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04644-x

Currently reading (or rather listening to the audio-book) of A Heart full of Headstones, by Ian Rankin

No need to say anything more about what is happening in the garden!

In the allotment the potatoes are finally starting to appear and I’ve got my tomato plants into growbags.  A few days away means the battle to cut the grass before it flowers is well and truly lost so the lesson from last year is not to try and cut it in the evening if I want to stand any chance of sleeping!

We’ve been eating salads this week as it’s been too hot for much else.  We’ve had some delicious new season Lincolnshire potatoes and English strawberries but I’m afraid I’ve also succumbed to Italian doughnut peaches and watermelon.