Do you think The Good Life could be remade, with me or Dave playing Tom Good (maybe not!)? If you have seen something on TV or heard something on the radio recently that you want to talk about, tell us here.
Writer, broadcaster and gardener Sarah Raven is on a mission to halt the rapid decline in Britain's essential bees, butterflies and pollinating insects by bringing flower power to towns, cities and the countryside.
The world's bees and other pollinating insects are in crisis. It is a complex problem that scientists the world over are trying to fathom, but the prognosis is grim - without healthy populations of insect pollinators across the world, our future food security is under threat.
Sarah Raven takes her mission out into the Great British countryside to encourage farmers and village communities to help recreate a network of crucial habitats for struggling bees, butterflies and pollinating insects.
With the loss of Britain's wildflower meadows and grasslands estimated at around 98 per cent, Sarah finds out whether we have simply lost our connection with the wildflowers and habitats that were once so common and supported our pollinators.
Sarah starts by attempting to change the attitude of just one small Northamptonshire village. Today tidiness rules and the village green is a close mown carpet of green. Will the village take to her plans and embrace wildflowers, or will tidiness prevail?
Sarah also meets the Farringtons - a Northamptonshire farming family spanning three generations. Duncan, who now runs the farm, investigates sowing perennial wildflower borders around his crops to increase habitats for insect pollinators and possibly to increase crop yields.
And at home, Sarah visits wildflower meadows and harvests wildflower seed in order to develop her own wildflower meadow, something everyone can do in their own community or at home.
I saw it and enjoyed it and hope in later episodes she will be talking about bee habitat and food stuffs for the caterpillars, for example those nettles she weedkilled.
I have already been writing about a lot of those wildflowers for bees and butterflies on my blog.
I saw it too and will be watching the next one (if I remember). Like her, I can't understand why public green spaces have to be mown to within an inch of their lives. We have a small patch of grass along the road from me. A couple of years ago, they were laying new drains through it so the grass either side of the trench didn't get cut for weeks. It looked lovely, all lush and green and full of daisies. As soon as the trench was filled along came the council and cut it right down to nothing. The grass quickly dried out and went brown and it just looked a mess until the following spring.
In the second programme of this three-part series, Sarah Raven takes her mission to halt the rapid decline in Britain's essential bees, butterflies and pollinating insects to our towns, and challenges the RHS Britain in Bloom competition to make their floral displays more nectar- and pollen-rich, to help to increase the amount of food and habitat for pollinating insects throughout the spring and summer months.
With the use of intensive farming methods, regionalisation of crops, and the loss of wildflower meadows and grasslands estimated at around 98 per cent, the countryside can be feast or famine for the pollinators. So Sarah finds out whether British gardens could become a network of mini nature reserves for the pollinating insects.
Sarah starts her campaign by attempting to change the attitude of Harrogate's successful gold medal-winning Britain in Bloom group. She challenges them to embrace nectar- and pollen-rich flowers over traditional bedding plants. Will the Bloom group take to her plans and ideas, or will the begonia bunch stand firm?
Sarah also challenges the UK gardening industry, the Horticultural Trades Association and the Royal Horticultural Society to champion pollinating insects by launching a 'pollinator-friendly' logo at the Chelsea Flower Show. The logo and label would enable gardeners to identify the best plants for bees and butterflies throughout garden centres and nurseries in the UK.
And at home, Sarah meets expert garden naturalist Steve Head, and explores her own garden's suitability for insect pollinators. Inspired by what she discovers, she develops a nectar garden - a mini oasis for pollinators.
Just watched the second programme and thought it a bit odd that while we are trying to save bees, hoverflies etc, they all seem keen to put out bowls of water to catch them and drown them!
And, was it really that difficult to come up with putting a bee picture on plants for people to recognise which are insect friendly?
Other than that, an interesting program and has prompted me to buy flowers for those humble bumbles
I didn't get that either, why the need to put washing up liquid in the water so they would drown in order to ID them? Couldn't they just have ID them in plain water where normally insects can float for a period of time - did seem wrong to me. She still hasn't talked about caterpillar and bee habitat yet - what's the point of trying to invite butterflies into your garden is there is no foodstuff for the caterpillars anywhere nearby?
I didn't know about bees drinking water though - never thought about that before so that's a good one to know! Mind you they can help themselves from my pond!
Millymollymandy wrote:I didn't get that either, why the need to put washing up liquid in the water so they would drown in order to ID them?
They have this habit of climbing back out... In order to get a reliable sample, you need to collect everything that lands in your trap over a given period of time. The numbers involved in these sorts of sampling experiments are absolutely minuscule, and the information gained is invaluable.
In the third and final programme of the series, Sarah Raven takes her mission to halt the rapid decline in Britain's essential bees, butterflies and pollinating insects to our cities and challenges our city parks departments to sow nectar rich modern meadows, and to make their floral displays more nectar and pollen rich to help to increase the amount of food and habitat for pollinating insects.
With the use of intensive farming methods, regionalisation of crops, and the loss of wildflower meadows and grasslands estimated at around 98%, the countryside can be feast or famine for our pollinators. So Sarah discovers how our cities and sprawling urban landscapes can play their part and become pollen and nectar rich networks of modern meadows and nectar rich flower displays.
Sarah starts her campaign in Birmingham. She challenges the parks department to replace endless acres of close mown grass with modern insect friendly meadows and to get rid of Victorian bedding displays. Sarah wants to show them that there is a more modern and sustainable way to landscape our cities that can save money and save our pollinators too.
Sarah visits the London Olympic Park to see a radically different approach to modern city landscaping. The park is the biggest to be built in the UK for decades, and tens of thousands of square metres of modern pollinator friendly meadows are being sown to come into glorious flower for the games in August 2012. Sarah gets an exclusive preview of the ground breaking biodiverse and pollinator friendly landscaping.
And at home Sarah puts modern meadow seed mixes to the test for people and pollinators alike. She wants to see if the seed mixes can pack a floral punch and supply our pollinators with a flow of pollen and nectar throughout the year.
Millymollymandy wrote:
I didn't know about bees drinking water though - never thought about that before so that's a good one to know! Mind you they can help themselves from my pond!
My new pond has rocks around the edge which creates small rock pools. I often see bees buzzing around these areas and I wondered why. Now I know. They seem to really love the little tiny pockets of water created by the rocks.
Thomzo wrote:I saw it too and will be watching the next one (if I remember). Like her, I can't understand why public green spaces have to be mown to within an inch of their lives. We have a small patch of grass along the road from me. A couple of years ago, they were laying new drains through it so the grass either side of the trench didn't get cut for weeks. It looked lovely, all lush and green and full of daisies. As soon as the trench was filled along came the council and cut it right down to nothing. The grass quickly dried out and went brown and it just looked a mess until the following spring.
Zoe
This is the saving grace for motorways. While few of us liked the way they chomped through the countryside, the embankments mostly untouched by lawnmower have become a haven for wildlife and flowers. They arte one of the factors that helped birds of prey recover from the decline of postwar years and have provided corridors for animals such as otters to journey from place to place.
Just because you see two eyes shining in the jungle at night, do not think that the worse thing that could happen is that you are about to be attacked by a tiger. It could be two one-eyed tigers.
I can vouch for that on the banks of the A303 dual carriageway where we spent a very happy (NOT!!! ) 6 and a half hours waiting for the AA to find our broken down car. Luckily we had a handy hawthorn to pee behind and whilst I was bored out of my brains I did at least have long grass and wild flowers to sit amongst.
Hope some naturalist hadn't set up one of the fake leaf cctv cams to record wildlife near and around the hawthorn then?
Just because you see two eyes shining in the jungle at night, do not think that the worse thing that could happen is that you are about to be attacked by a tiger. It could be two one-eyed tigers.
(thanks)
) 6 and a half hours waiting for the AA to find our broken down car. Luckily we had a handy hawthorn to pee behind and whilst I was bored out of my brains I did at least have long grass and wild flowers to sit amongst.