Plummeting insect numbers

Whilst working in my garden yesterday in the beautiful sunshine i found two ladybirds sunning themselves on my rose bushes. No bees or butterflies yet, plenty of ants and spiders crawling around though.

The Guardian's article completely contradicts the Independent article where they say we should be eating insects to save the planet. I was under the impression that some of our supermarkets were going to trial edible insects.

www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/entomophagy-eat-insects-food-diet-save-planet-meat-cattle-deforestation-a8259991.html

Who is right?

It is very frightening. Do you remember when a summer day out in the car resulted in hundreds of insects plastered against the windscreen? It doesn't happen now.

I expect gardeners and their pesticides have some part to play, along with more industrial users of chemicals.

Plenty of bee activity in our garden over the last few days. You can hear them as soon as you walk out the back door.

The early flowering Prunus domestica is smothered in them, ditto snowdrops, hellebores and crocuses.

Wonderful to see it.

NOW (12.39) on freeview 232 - the Environmental Audit committee is having discussions on planetary health, has been talking about insects

Good post, travelsafar - totally agree. It's the responsibility of all of us. And we can encourage our DC/DGC to do likewise.

we still have regular visits from difernet types of birds due to the three feeding stations and bird baths we have in the garden.I encourage insects as much as possible by planting the types of flowers recommended for this purpose. I too leave a patch of nettles and sometime i grow just a couple of brassica plants for the butterflies to use and we have a budhlia tree which is just alive with bees and butterflies when the blossom is there. We must all do what we can to preserve every form of life for the future generations if it is possible to do so.

Other posters have mentioned paving gardens and round 'ere, many front gardens are just that: paved or concrete. For cars. That is becoming more widespread and contributing to flooding in susceptible areas.
I hate seeing plastic grass too and there are a few front gardens locally which have installed it. Why?? No, don't answer!

Our garden is a mess at the moment because I've not been able to do much lately (recovering fracture). We back onto an area of woodland so the bottom of the garden has been turned into a woodland garden. DH made a narrow winding path through it using recycled bricks and I'm planting it up with mainly woodland or shade loving plants which attract wildlife. The pond is being re-dug (became leaky, overgrown and full of bindweed and bramble) and the small herb patch also contains blackcurrants and thornless blackberry. MIL isn't keen on it as it often looks uncontrolled and she likes things neat and structured, whereas we like a garden with a bit of mystery.
Even so, there are fewer insects around than there used to be and we don't get sparrows any more and haven't for years. We have bird feeders and blackbirds, nuthatches, chaffinches, robins, varieties of tits, wrens and thrushes visit, together with the larger ones and those darned parakeets!

Years ago Sarah Raven fronted a TV programme about planting for wildlife and I felt really excited by it. She tried to persuade a couple of councils to use wildlife-friendly plantings as a trial but years later, how successful has she been in converting councils to follow suit?

Nanna58 Ooooh, please tell me exactly where! I live close to Beckenham, on the Shirley/West Wickham border! I'd love to know where this border is!

I shall resist the urge to whack them with my trusty electric tennis racket if they come in.
Bees and wasps are usually quite compliant if you wave your arms in the direction of the door though.

I heard a buzzing when I was parking the car today, when I looked in the back it was a queen wasp flying around . I did let it out rather than hit it with my handbag.

And I have two bites already and it's only February.

I've bought seeds specifically to attract bees and butterflies to plant this year.
Should be interesting when they fly into my front room.

Gardeners can do a great deal by just growing bee friendly plants - loads of advice on the internet - instead of trying to establish wild flower areas which can be difficult to maintain and often end up being a disappointment.

Leave patches of nettles and don't worry about being too tidy. It all helps.

If you'd rather not have stinging nettles in your garden, grow Agastache 'Black Adder' instead. It resembles nettles and bees love it!!

Some wonderful person where I live in Beckenham Kent is planting random pieces of verge with flowers with the small sign ‘ save the bees’ , there is a little box at each , so people can leave either seeds, plants, or money so the work can be continued.

quizqueen our garden is a bit of a mess at the moment! I did try to grow wildflowers a couple of years ago but without success but certainly, the bees do seem to love any purple flowering plants and we seem to have plenty of those when in season.

Vegan diet is hugely important also as uses a lot less energy - crops and water - and will slow global warming. We need to eat organic
Unfortunately, Razzy it would not be possible to feed the world's population with organically produced vegan food.

I certainly think, though, that we need to be far less careless with our planet and its resources.

Day6 there is another thread about someone whose neighbour wants an oak tree chopped down because the 'leaves drop'.

What I, and everyone else, want to know is: when are our governments going to wake up and put measures in place to halt the decline? What will it take?

Thank goodness for courageous and committed campaigners!

It worries me a great deal, as it should all of us. We seem to be hurtling towards a cliff edge environmentally, in all respects. I agree that we all need to play our part,*CardiffJaguar*. One of our DDs is a Green Party member and her little family really live as best they can by their principles - they don't have a car (though admittedly they use a car pool or hire one now and then for outings), they recycle and re-use everything, bought second hand for their baby (now two) and eat as plant-based and local as they can. Even so it's not easy. I am deeply ashamed of buying so much I don't really need, like clothes and books, though I am trying to rein that in as best I can. I'm trying to make the garden as wildlife friendly as possible and we make compost - but what individuals do is nowhere near enough in this throwaway consumer society. Hard not to feel despondent.

I hope so too. Hadn't read that article, so I will pass it on to friends Lisagran

One of my bugbears (deliberate pun) is the way people in suburbia chop down trees and hedges and pave over gardens. A neighbour told me her reason for having two beautiful trees felled (they were a long way from the house so no shade problem or root damage) as "they were messy with all the leaves dropping and the birds sit in them and wake us up in the morning.." It made me so angry that I had to walk away. A year later the lawn and perennial shrubs were gone and the whole lot became a bare parking area. She did however have a massive (and I mean enormous!) satellite dish erected to the front of her house.

I had to create a parking space too but ensured as much as possible of the front garden had green planted areas and we took the drive around the lovely trees at the bottom of the garden.

OH and I moved and bought a house together. We have a part of the garden given over to wild flowers and a mini orchard and OH only uses organic products and fertilisers. Everything we use that is compostable goes into the garden bins. Last summer I had a lovely time in the garden with GD making two insect hotels and we feed the birds and provide mini pond areas in the garden for wildlife. I asked for a birdbath for Christmas and got one.

That makes only a tiny difference as destruction is on a large scale, but if everyone was aware of the threat humans are creating in the natural world we would change our ways.

Everyone must stop thinking a garden should be tidy. Nature isn’t tidy. Fortunately our local council now plants wildflowers in their flower beds. It looks so much better than the old Victorian way of everything in neat rows. Thankfully many gardening programmes focus on wildlife now and it’s becoming a bit more mainstream. Hope it’s not too little too late!

How lovely Synonymous
I agree it involves some preparation .
Years ago after advice from a naturalist friend, I raked away at a corner of the lawn and threw wild flower seeds over it.
It was very unscientific but I remembered I'd been told that yellow rattle was strong and would compete with the grasses. It did!
Otherwise the plants which survive are the red clover and primrose which come up every year and spread.

Imm6 so pleased to hear that you are also going to try for a wild flower garden. Did you know that you need to get rid of the lawn grass first as the wildflowers canot compete with such strong grasses. We have researched it and there is so much more to it than just leaving it to do it's own thing so I think it is going to take some time to get it right but will be very worthwhile.
Last year our smallest DGS had a bright idea when he filled his planter tub with wild flower seeds and it was beautiful. He was so excited to see his mummy's bees busily visiting all the flowers and would sit watching them all for ages.

We sold a house that had borders full of old fashioned perennials, roses and shrubs that were good for bees and insects. The people who bought it were enchanted by it. Within three years, they had grubbed up every single plant and shrub and laid it entirely to lawn. Too much work I suppose, but it broke my heart. When we came here, there was nothing, a blank canvas, so we set out to do it again. It is still a work in progress, but we’re getting there.

I haven't a garden, but if I had one I couldn't manage, I'd pave it if needs be.