Lengthen growing season with more to enjoy

IT has been another busy month for us at Greener Henley, we have been meeting the people in and around Henley keen to do what they can to improve our environment.

The YMCA is looking for keen gardeners willing to give an hour or so of their time to encourage some of their young new gardeners. If you would like to pass on some of your horticultural know-how, please get in touch with them.

Now is the time to sow wildflower seeds if you are thinking of making a wildflower patch in your garden. They don’t need a lot of ground preparation, just scrape back any grass before sowing and keep watered in dry weather.

You could lengthen the growing season by planting some early bulbs for pollinators, single flowers as double varieties are too complicated and, if they’ve been genetically engineered, they may not have any pollen.

The first bulbs to flower are aconites and snowdrops, followed by crocuses and daffodils. Please check that the bulbs you buy have not been treated with any chemicals that would harm insects. For plants, I would recommend good early ones — the first emerging bumblebees love primroses, pulmonaria (lungwort) and cowslips.

Last month saw the inaugural “Wild Summit” of nature-lovers. Groups such as Buglife, Butterfly Conservation and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust came together with many other conservationists at this conference and published the Bristol Declaration of Insect Decline. This states that: “Reversing insect decline is essential, not optional for halting nature loss and achieving the UK’s climate and biodiversity goals.”

You might wonder why? Well, according to a survey conducted by Buglife and Kent Wildlife Trust the number of flying insects sampled on vehicle number plates, across the UK, has fallen by a staggering 63 per cent since 2021. Bee Walk, the national bumblebee monitoring scheme run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, revealed that 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees since records began. Across the UK numbers declined by almost a quarter (22.5 per cent) compared to the 2010-2023 average.

The signatories of the declaration affirm that the decline in insect populations in the UK is caused by a combination of well-documented pressures: habitat loss and fragmentation, pesticide and chemical use, intensive farming practices, pollution, climate change and invasive species. These factors are pushing many insects toward extinction thresholds and undermining the resilience of ecosystems vital to human wellbeing.

The declaration calls for:

l Restoration and reconnection of insect-rich habitats across farmland, towns and cities, freshwater systems, and protected sites;

l Legally enforced reductions in pesticide use and other pollutants;

l Legal safeguards for key insect species and their habitats;

l Increased investment in ecological monitoring, scientific research and public education.

However, individually, we can do our bit — just by growing as little as
1 sq m of wildflowers to feed and provide shelter for our native insects and other creatures. Don’t forget to register your plot on the Nature Squared page on Greener Henley’s website — greenerhenley.org.uk — so we can measure how much of Henley and area is being set aside for nature. Perhaps you could encourage your neighbours to join in, so that your street has handy nature stepping stones for visiting wildlife.

I have heard of some towns and villages that arrange plant swaps of our native wildflowers (grown from seed) or other well-known plants popular with pollinators. If that is something that interests you, please get in touch. It would be fantastic to build up a bank of volunteer pollinator-friendly growers that can help supplement our Nature Squares.

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RECENTLY, I have had the good fortune to take part in a couple of Citizen Science forays. We put out a moth trap overnight in a Henley garden and in the morning, we checked to see what we had attracted. Using magnifiers, a micro-moth reference book and an identification app, we identified 17 moths of eight different species. These were duly recorded with the location and date on a national recording site.

It is getting late in the season, so finding so many different moths in the town seemed a good result. The location of the moths is important as it will be near the food source of their larvae (caterpillars). I had not realised until we did the survey, that some species of moths don’t have mouth parts — they only live long enough to procreate.

Another enjoyable afternoon was spent walking around Gillotts Corner Field — the town green — looking at its biodiversity. Again, I was surprised by the variety of species we came across. We took note of about 26 different species and my friend recorded them on the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre app. We do have some beautiful native flowers like the wild basil or the field scabious growing in the field. I love the images conjured up by some of our common names of plants like old man’s beard and the wayfaring tree.

Since finding the artichoke gall on an oak tree at Marsh Meadows, as I mentioned in last month’s column, every time I walk past an oak tree I look closely to see if I can find any other galls on them.

We found four different oak galls at Gillotts Corner Field, with such lovely names as the silk button gall, spangle galls (that look like tiny pancakes), the knopper gall on acorn cups and oak marbles. Apparently, there are about 42 galls that can be found on our oak trees — each one home to a different invertebrate. So when you are out and about, keep your eyes peeled and magnifying glass to hand!

Actually, there is a British Plant Gall Society that keeps records of hundreds of galls and which plants they grow on. You might think, why would anyone be so interested in galls? Well, they are all part of our rich biodiversity that makes up nature as a whole. If we are concerned about the decline in invertebrates, we have to know what we have.

The Greener Henley outreach group is very keen to get more Citizen Science activities happening in Henley and environs. We are thinking of running a few workshops explaining how to identify and record what we find, as well as hear some fascinating experts giving interesting talks about different species.

If this is something that interests you, please get in touch with me through greenerhenley@gmail.com and we will see what we can do.

Or, if you have a special interest in an aspect of nature and wouldn’t mind sharing your knowledge, we would love to hear from you. Help us get Henley’s wildlife recognised.

Finally, here is an unusual request from me. If any reader is going to the coast in the next couple of weeks, please could you go beachcombing for me?

I am looking for some smallish lengths (up to 2m) of fishing gear that has been washed up with the tide — those bits of brightly coloured plastic rope, netting etc.

This is for an exciting schools’ science/art project we are planning on doing at the Schools Environmental Science Fair on November 12. If you can help, just drop me a line at greenerhenley@gmail.com with the heading “FAO Diana” and I will be most grateful.