Devon Wildlife Trust Action for Insects Campaign

 
• Sign up to the Devon Wildlife Trust's Action for Insects Campaign and receive regular newsletters and advice on action that you can take to help insects.
• Download their toolkits for individuals, communities and primary schools to find out what you can do for insects in your garden. 
• Download the Wild About Gardens useful booklets on: Butterflies | Ponds | Hedgehogs | Worms | Bats | Bees
 

Go Chemical Free in your garden.

• Use companion planting to encourage pollination of veg crops and to attract natural enemies of crop pests.
• Use physical barriers to protect your plants. Coffee ground or crushed egg shells can be used to repel slugs.

Butterfly Conservation Trust and BumbleBee Conservation Trust Insect A&E Campaign

• Download a free plant guide from The Butterfly Conservation Trust
• Visit their gardening advice page for more information.
• The Bumblebee Conservation Trust website has an excellent page on gardens with a list of Spring, Early Summer and Late Summer plants to aim for - https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/garden-advice/

🌿Attract moths

• Flowers that release their scent in the evening are a big draw for moths.
• Many moth caterpillars feed on the native plants we consider weeds, so tolerating some weeds and long grass in your garden can also be very beneficial to moths.

🦋Attract Butterflies

• A diverse mix of plants will attract a diverse mix of butterflies
• Plant nectar and pollen rich varieties.

🐝Attract BEES

• Spring – Primroses, Water Avens, Lesser Celandine, Red Dead-nettle and Bugle  - (also Cowslips, Pasqueflower and Snake’s-head-fritillary if conditions are suitable)
• Early Summer – Viper’s Bugloss, Red Clover, Tufted Vetch, Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil and Foxgloves
• Late Summer – Betony, Devil’s-bit Scabious, Musk Mallow and (for bog gardens, pond edges) Water Mint and Purple Loosestrife

🌳Good trees include – Rowan, Whitebeams, Willows and Fruit Trees (Apple, Cherry, Plum and bushes such as currants and raspberry). Flowering Ivy is also an absolutely incredible late season nectar source, and some fairly rare hoverflies, bees and moths have been found nectaring on ivy in urban areas!

RSPB/Buglife also have these excellent pollinator workshops available, including one on gardens - https://community.rspb.org.uk/getinvolved/wales/b/wales-blog/posts/urban-buzz-workshops

‍FURTHER RESOURCES

IDENTIFICATION AND RECORDING

The Devon Bumblebee Atlas is available as a PDF here

The Bumblebee Conservation ID chart is available here

And a page on common solitary bees here

For help in identification the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants Facebook group (for those that use Facebook) is also super useful- https://www.facebook.com/groups/1590641777855221/

iRecord is a great site for recording your identified insects! - https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/

Sourcing SEEDS AND PLUG PLANTS

Some sites to get wildflower plug plants from include:

• Naturescape - https://www.naturescape.co.uk/
• ‍British Wild Flower Plants - http://www.wildflowers.co.uk/
• ‍Cumbria Wildflowers - https://www.cumbriawildflowers.co.uk/
• ‍Meadowmania - https://www.meadowmania.co.uk/

And one of the best for seed in terms of tracing provenance is:

• Emorsgate - https://wildseed.co.uk/
• Devon based seed Goren Farm, based in East Devon - https://www.goren.co.uk/online_store/

Local providers of plants in general are Atlantic Botanic - https://www.atlanticbotanic.co.uk/

PLEASE NOTE: If planning on larger field scale reseeding projects local provenance seed should be considered first. The Bumblebees Conservation Trust can provide advice where needed.

OTHER HABITAT CREATION INFO

A Youtube video on Bee Bank creation

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Making a bumblebee nest PDF here‍

Make a cCob Bee Brick