Dear Readers, I have fallen in love with a tiny front garden just a few houses away from me in the County Roads in East Finchley. Every time I go past, I have to stop and admire the combination of yellow and purple, and have a look to see which pollinators are visiting. I love that it provides pollen and nectar late in the year, when it’s hard to find, whilst still being so aesthetically pleasing.

As advised by a reader, I stopped to smell the Verbena, and discovered that it does have a subtle but delightful scent. Plus, a visiting hoverfly!

Then there’s the Rudbeckia…

And the Phlomis – the flowers always remind me of prawns arranged along the edge of a glass at a 1980s dinner party, but maybe that’s just me…

There are some grasses as a backdrop to the flowers…

And there is some soft-leaved Mahonia, some Achillea just going over, some Cirsium atropurpureum, and lots of other interesting plants. I suspect there will be something of interest right through the year.

Mahonia

Cirsium atropurpureum

However, what delighted me even more than the floral display this morning was seeing these little bees on the ivy flowers. 

Welcome, Ivy Bees! I’ve become a bit obsessed with checking every bunch of ivy flowers for these little guys, but this is the first time I’ve seen them this year. They look superficially like honeybees, but note that the stripes are much more defined, the abdomens shinier and the thorax ginger. Make the most of them, they won’t be around for long – they are the last solitary bees to emerge in the UK and appear to be pretty much dependent on ivy flowers.

The ivy flowers don’t just provide nectar and pollen for Ivy Bees, but for lots of other species as well. Have a look at this lot – there are Ivy Bees, hoverflies, ‘ordinary’ flies (much underrated pollinators incidentally) and wasps feeding in the film below. Apologies for the sound of the saw in the background :-(.

As I was taking my photographs, the owner of the house popped out, and we had a little chat. They had deliberately left the ivy because they’d noticed how popular it was with the bees. It would have been so easy to go with the usual narrative about ivy being untidy and undesirable, and yet they had paid attention and decided to tidy it up for the convenience of passers-by, but to leave it for the bees. I find this so heartening. The garden shows just what can be done in a tiny space, without sacrificing beauty.