Unexpected golden wins!

Steffie Shields highlights this month’s “pinch-me” late summer moments.

Some commentators predict a bumper crop of Olympic medals across the 2024 Team GB board. As I tap out these thoughts, six Lincolnshire representatives feature among those gearing up in Paris for the greatest challenge of their sporting careers – going for gold!

The hope for those electrifying thrills we all experience together as a nation is as high as this summer’s hollyhocks!

One wonders how many revelled in this shared feast of heart-stopping, proud-making endeavours? Whatever those sporting gods determine, congratulations and thanks to our local Olympians for taking part with striving athleticism and fair play. You and your team-mates have given the country an unquantifiable uplift.

Olympic organisers know how changing temperature, weather and wind, a whole range of factors and fine details, not least being roared on by animated crowds, will affect results on whatever playing field. Meanwhile, closer to home, Nature continues to play her sporting part by putting on a considerably more peaceful, but equally magical display of achievement and excitement in our gardens and parks this month.

All will depend on gardeners’ pre-planning, tending to plants’ needs for health and fitness, the complex chemistry of their make-up, diet and watering, and upright support and pruning in due season. Critical to winning results, a miraculously diverse team of pollinating insects is vital to inject life into those sought-after displays of flower power. Well-designed flower beds may please the eye, but without their happy-making thrum, and sudden, uplifting flittering of butterflies and moths, all becomes alarmingly and boringly sterile.

Florae and insect habitat
Scientists have been voicing concerns about the impact of the major 2022 drought, compounded over the past 18 months by record rainfall. Flooded florae and insect habitat has hit breeding. Perhaps you have noticed a drastic decline in insects this summer? Defining 1960s lyrical strains come to mind: “Where have all the flowers gone?” “Where have all the butterflies, bumblebees and wasps gone?” is not a 2020s theme tune we wish to hear.

Back in 2018, one late summer afternoon, a golden moment – I came across, just at my eye-level, a handsome comma butterfly sunbathing on an Indian bean tree leaf. Its easily identifiable, ragged orange wings and brown spots cast a striking long shadow. Usually swift to flitter off, it remained undeterred by my presence, perched for ages on its lime-green launch-pad as if waiting for the perfect breeze to lift it into the air.

According to the Woodland Trust, comma caterpillars prefer feeding on stinging nettles. Supposedly common, medium-sized butterflies, adult commas are normally on the wing throughout the year, also laying eggs on willow, currant, elm and hops.

Besides many perambulations in other people’s gardens, and considering nettles aplenty tolerated on our own garden boundary, it is troubling that since that September 2018 encounter, I haven’t spied one single comma.

Restoring balance
What can we do to help this apparent decline? Extra wildflower areas in our gardens will have helped, but this growing trend is not always appropriate for smaller gardens, and in practise quite complex to manage let alone maintain.

So here is one simple suggestion to help improve and restore the balance: simply sit in the garden for 15 minutes, just like the annual UK-wide summer survey the Big Butterfly Count, challenging volunteers to count numbers and types of butterflies and day-flying moths spotted in their areas. Only this time, rather than recording butterfly action, quietly study the content of your borders. Determine if you have enough varied late-summer flowering shrubs recommended for sunny spots of well-drained soil. Notice how cold-blooded butterflies are drawn to sup from those plants, such as alliums and sedums, with thousands of miniscule florets.

Buddleja, the aptly named butterfly bush, heads the list. Its easily recognisable, high-arching branches of silvery grey leaves terminate in dense sprays of scented, miniscule violet-blue, nectar-rich flowers, packed in elongated panicles.

Invest in a range of English lavenders, and bushy, evergreen hebes, whether pink, purple or white, to attract peacock, red admiral and small tortoiseshell specimens. Tiny holly flowers are loved by holly blue butterflies, while ivy, and herbs like marjoram, provide invaluable food.

Seasonal tidy
During hot weather spells, ensure plants are well-watered, though not water-logged, to produce as much nectar as possible. A gentle evening stroll to deadhead spent flowers will profit both gardener and pollinators.

A multitude will soon fly down to feast on any naturalised autumn crocus, making a sudden appearance amongst the weathered grass, so long as their shiny leaves, lasting for months, have been allowed to die down and were not accidentally “strimmed” away earlier! I always thought these “naked ladies” strangely out of place in September’s occasional Indian summers.

I now appreciate that by suddenly raising our levels of excitement, just before the depressing, shivering winds of winter blow in, these autumn stars offer a subtle nudge, a reminder prompting garden-lovers to purchase next year’s early flowering bulbs for a sensational spring. Their place in the cycle of life in our gardens is a significant part of Nature’s cunning plan.

My favourite, Crocus speciosus, a hardy perennial soon to put in a sudden, random appearance, is easy to grow, and aptly named. ‘Speciosus’ means showy. Silvery violet-blue flowers open paler throats centred by gay orange anthers. Each fragile petal has delicate, dark veining which must be seen to be believed, as if fairies have been busy with felt-tip pens.

Crocus speciosus corms originate from eastern Mediterranean parts, including Turkey, Bulgaria and the Crimean-Caucasian region, and are best planted out here in August. They are suitable for naturalising in full sun in grass. Magical autumn goblets will offer a guaranteed attractive source of nectar and pollen for bees, butterflies and many other types of pollinating insects. Then narrow green leaves follow on after the flowers have all too quickly faded.

Avoid being too quick to tidy away any windfall fruit. Last September, another incidental but fascinating pause helped clear away a few more mental cobwebs. Time stood still while I, equally motionless, silently observed a red admiral butterfly accompanied by numbers of black ants, all ravenously gorging on a ripe golden ‘Egremont Russet’ apple.

Fingers crossed, improving temperatures and hours of sunshine will bring butterfly numbers back to near normal, flitting up to skies above, as inspirational as that flickering if fraudulent Olympic flame.

Our American-based daughter and granddaughter were here recently to witness a few thrilling evening gymnastic flypasts by our local barn owl – happy holiday times shared at duskfall – even more epic than Celine Dion’s magnificent finale in Paris!

Nature’s wildlife can make everyone winners, thanks to her unexpected, fleeting – oh so special – golden moments of joy on our own turf.

Ivy
Ivy benefits butterflies in a number of ways. In autumn its flowers attract late-flying species such as the red admiral. The holly blue butterfly lays its eggs on the flower buds in late summer, and the dense mass of leaves provides shelter for butterflies that overwinter as adults, such as the brimstone, peacock and small tortoiseshell.

Marjoram (oregano)
The flowers of marjoram or oregano (Origanum vulgare) are a magnet for many varieties of butterfly, including gatekeeper, common blue, small tortoiseshell, peacock, and the meadow brown. Its leaves offer larval food for the caterpillars of the mint moth, Pyrausta aurata.

Snowberry
The insignificant flowers of the snowberry (Symphoricarpos) are a nectar source for several insects, while its leaves provide larval food for the holly blue butterfly.

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