The sleepy drone of bumble bees on a warm afternoon, to find a comfy seat and doze by, the sharp jolt of excitement as the swifts sweep and swirl with piercing screams in the sky high above and the fluting evening song of the blackbird reminding us that the light is fading and it will soon be time to go inside.

We know that we can no longer take these small pleasures for granted, that the survival of the species we know and love depends on our support.  We also know that our gardens, however small, are of value and the ways in which we manage them needs to reflect that.

In natural plant communities competition rules, there are winners and losers, but we manage our gardens to avoid the loss of our chosen plants, weeding between them taking away layers of native plants with their soil shading, moisture conserving and pollen and nectar producing properties which our invertebrates, small mammals, amphibians and birds need to flourish.

How much more beneficial to our wildlife and to ourselves if we allow native plants to grow as they wish, in amongst our chosen ornamental ones.

Diversity in our plants offers variety in shape and size of flowers for a variety of pollinators and in turn their prey species. We never see a wild rose growing in isolation, it’s usually scrambling through a hedge surrounded by countless other hedge bottom plants, but in a garden we’ve been taught to plant a rose and keep it weed free, the ground beneath hoed and open to erosion and compaction. Over time we’ve learned to garden with disregard for nature’s processes and now we know how very damaging it’s been.

So let’s embrace summer’s splendour, plant flowers for pollinators, let natives and ornamentals grow together in the conditions they prefer and they will reward us with bees, butterflies, beetles, bird song and unexpected treats like the Hummingbird Hawk moth and Rose Chafer beetle which came to my garden recently. Just splendid!