In praise of some non-natives

Wildlife gardening evangelists frequently exhort us to plant native species in our gardens - quite rightly, as there are indeed many native plants that are decorative and provide valuable resources for insects and their larvae. 

But when it gets to this point in autumn the choice of flowering natives is pretty narrow. There's ivy, which is certainly a terrific source of pollen and nectar for insects and also food plant for holly blue butterfly larvae, but that's about it  - other that a few late hogweed flowers and yarrow, which flower up until the first frosts but don't bring much colour to a garden.

So that's when Michaemas daisies Aster amellus, whose natural range extends across southern Europe into Asia, come into their own. Whenever the sun shines the Michlaelmas daisies in our garden attract a constant stream of visitors, including ....





.... hoverflies, like this Heliophilus pendulus

..........honeybees ......

.............. small tortoiseshells ............

.............and red admirals, all photographed in the space of a few minutes at the end of last week.

Marigold Calendula officinalis, which originated in southern Europe, provides similar services for butterflies throughout autumn.

Buddleia davidii, the famous butterfly bush from Central China and Japan, has - until recently - been a favourite amongst wildlife gardeners as a nectar source for butterflies, even though it usually finishes flowering long before the late autumn generation of small tortoiseshells, peacocks, red admirals and commas get into their stride. These days conservationists give B.davidii the thumbs down, on account of its invasive tendencies, but there is a much better Buddleia alternative - B x weyeriana, which is an interspecific hybrid between B.davidii and B.globosa and has very attractive pinkish-orange flowers and none of its parent's tendency to seed itself around prolifically. It's extremely hardy and continues to flower long after the first frosts, offering a 'last-chance saloon' for any insects that need to top up with nectar before going into hibernation.

Summer in the City: Where the Wild Things Are....

Botanically, there are two sides to a city. There's the carefully manicured, redeveloped part that has been purged of any plants that are out of place - and that doesn't get much more sterile than the one above, which is Northumbria University's campus. The only living greenery in this canyon of glass, stainless steel and concrete is the row of lollipop hornbeam trees on the right, with their foliage clipped into a neat cube. The green circles are astroturf (although I did notice that a plucky real fern was just beginning to grow around the edge of one - it won't last long).

For the other botanical face of a city, you need to venture just a few streets away from the centre, where the wild things are.

There you'll find the Buddleia davidii in full flower in late July, adding beauty to old walls.

The flower heads are magnificent this year, perhaps because the shortage of water that usually kicks in in late spring in cities just didn't materialise. All that rain kept the wild flowers growing and flowering ....

 ......but there are no butterflies to enjoy the Buddleia flowers yet.

This is lady's bedstraw, blooming alongside ripening brambles in one  of the less manicured parts of Newcastle. Who knows how this plant, that's usually associated with dry haymeadows, came to be here. Brought in with fodder with horses maybe, before the age of the automobile, and hanging on ever since? Maybe a relict of the distant days when all this was open fields? We'll never know, but it's a welcome reminder of the countryside in the heart of a city.

Pure white trumpets of bindweed clambering through an old, broken down fence. Its brittle underground rhizomes are moved from place to place when soil and rubble is shifted.

Drifts of hawkweed, rose bay willowherb and wild parsnip in an old flower bed that's no longer maintained - maybe one of the less unpleasant consequences of public spending cuts?

Scentless mayweed, a cornfield weed, growing alongside a security fence around a construction site.

Drifts of melilot, growing on a rubble-strewn ex-industrial site. The plant has a powerful aroma of new-mown hay and you can smell it from some distance on a warm day.

A double-flowered opium poppy, a refugee from a long-vanished garden, growing on rubble.

By next year this bank of rubble will be bulldozed away, when this site is redeveloped, but for now it's home to corn poppies, oriental poppies and dyer's rocket .... and a host of other wild plants.

A lot of wild oats are sown in the centre of Newcastle on Friday nights, these were thriving in a neglected flower bed.

Rose bay willow herb on the edge of the Shieldfield industrial estate, five minutes walk from the university campus in the picture at the top of this post.

Ragwort amongst the broken bricks.

Tansy, which has a powerful aroma when it's crushed......

....... with tall stems threaded through a wire fence.

Yellow toadflax growing between a link fence and the pavement.

Wild parsnip puts down roots wherever derelict land provides a temporary opportunity ....

.... to display its tall flower stems .....

... that brighten up even the most brutal urban architecture.