Flower Lady outside the Sloane Club (part of ‘Chelsea in Bloom’

Dear Readers, today I was at the Chelsea Flower Show for a few hours – my friend M was volunteering at the Songbird Garden (of which more later), and I’d never been, so it seemed like an ideal opportunity. But I had a few words of advice from friends who had been before, and for once I paid attention. I was outside the entrance at 7.30 a.m. (the show opens at 8.00 a.m.) and there was already a substantial queue. Plus, there are the usual bag checks, and all tickets have to be presented on a mobile phone this year, so this had the potential to slow things up. 

As I headed along Chelsea Bridge Road, I passed this rather impressive flower lady (above) – ‘Chelsea in Bloom’ is being held to coincide with Chelsea Flower Show this year, and so various shops and clubs had taken the theme to heart. There were crowds of people outside Ralph Lauren (right on the corner of King’s Road and Lower Sloane Street), taking selfies with the very handsome security guard and generally blocking the pavement. Goodness knows what it will be like later in the day.

Once in, I grabbed a coffee and a muffin. £9!!! Holy moly. And then I advanced off in search of the Songbird garden, along the main ‘avenue’. Just look at those London Plane trees, they must be some of the tallest in London.

I found the Songbird garden quickly, and hallelujah it wasn’t too busy. It’s a small garden, and I loved that it looks as if anyone could create a corner like this. It features hedging plants such as yew, to provide cover for nesting and moving through the garden, a pond, and bird-friendly plants such as hawthorn and teasel. Plus, it looks good! And the logpiles will provide a home for insects who could also serve as food. It’s not a big, flashy garden, but it I loved it.

Right opposite was the Karoo Succulent Garden, and someone was already eyeing up the bigger plants in the hope that they’d be sold off on the last day of the show. This is something of a tradition – the display plants are offered for sale, and Sloane Square tube station becomes a forest of exotic plants, as people try to manhandle their shrubs and climbers onto the train.

And then I got distracted by the Main Pavilion, which was blissfully empty. All of the nurseries who specialise in particular kinds of plant were here, so there were plenty of roses…

Incidentally, the stripey rose (second from the bottom) is a Rosa Mundi, and it was the only rose that I saw that actually attracted a bee.

Then there was the hosta display, where the grower was trying to persuade someone that the plants don’t necessarily get eaten by slugs…

And there was a fine display of astroemerias…

Then I was distracted by a very nice pollinator garden, which, unusually, didn’t just talk about bees and butterflies but had spaces for beetles and hoverflies and even springtails (not pollinators but most excellent detritivores_.

Then I was sidetracked by this display of narcissi…

..and this vegetable garden…

There were displays of plants from various countries and regions, including this magnificent garden featuring flowers from the Cape in South Africa.

And there was a salvia nursery…

and some truly beautiful peonies…

and finally, the more modest beauty of Japanese Maples…

Well, Readers, by now it was all getting a bit more crowded, so I decided to find myself an ice cream (of which there is no shortage at Chelsea) and decide what to see to make the most of my remaining energy. The bigger show gardens were already three or four people deep, and I’d seen the one that I really wanted to see. So, I decided to go and have a look at the balcony and container gardens – so many people only have a tiny space for plants, so I was intrigued to see what could be done. But for that, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow….

Ah yes, Readers, it’s that time of year when the garden is suddenly full of babies – starlings and sparrows in this case. I’d have loved to have sat and watched them, but sadly the Genetic Basis of Adaptation calls (Topic 3 in my biology course). Still, the fledglings are adorable, with the way that they just sit around waiting for their parents to stuff their beaks full of caterpillars or at least suet pellets.

I particularly liked the very fluffy dude on the left. It looks as if he’s got his head wet trying to drink from the pond.

And here’s poor, hard-working Dad….

And a less-than-patient starling, waiting for breakfast….

But at least so far the youngsters appear to be intact – the cat that prowls around has the disadvantage of being white, so s/he’s easily spotted, the sparrowhawk hasn’t been around, and although there were two jays doing laps of the garden yesterday they seemed to be more interested in one another than in murdering anything. Long may it continue! After all, sparrows and starlings are both Red List species, so they need all the help they can get.

The Heatherwick Studio entry for the Queen Elizabeth II National Memorial

Dear Readers, I have been hard at work slogging away on the cause of biological variation and the nature of genetic mutation today, but I did manage to raise my head long enough to read about the current competition for a national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II, which is to be built in St James’s Park in central London. The list has been whittled down to 5 entrants, including the Heatherwick Studios offering above – you might remember Thomas Heatherwick for the aborted Garden Bridge, the exploding Routemasters, and the cauldron at the 2012 Olympics, although I do rather like the roof of the Coal Drops Yard complex, even though it looks a little like a droopy moustache.

Coal Drops Yard

The other four entries are by Foster and Partners….

Foster and Partners entry

JL Gibbons…

JL Gibbons entry

Tom Stewart Smith….

Tom Stuart Smith entry

and, finally, Wilkinson Eyre

Wilkinson Eyre entry

You can have a look at all five entries here  and I would love to know what you think if you have a minute. I already have a firm favourite, which I suspect won’t win, but you never know! You can see some more photos of the plans, and each finalist has a little 90 second video, some of which contain truly cringe-worthy prose. And if you have even more time, you can actually feedback to the powers that be. How could you resist?

I am muchly reminded of the Princess Diana memorial fountain in Hyde Park that turned out to be a health hazard and had to be shut down. Can we do it right this time? I am no great fan of the monarchy (as you might have guessed) but I am a Londoner, and this massive project will impact on a great chunk of London green space.

I will come clean with my favourite once I’ve heard back from you lovely lot. Fire away!

Corn Crake (Crex crex) Photo by By Alpo Roikola – Own work by the original uploader, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132715911

Dear Readers, you might remember my featuring the Corn Crake in one of my Red List posts a while back, so I thought I’d share this happy tale of people coming together to preserve this increasingly-rare bird. In 2014, the first male Corn Crake for 17 years was heard calling on Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland, which looks like an extraordinarily beautiful place.

Rathlin Island (Northern Ireland) Photo by Brian O’Neill

By 2024 there were about four calling males visiting the island. And if you haven’t heard what a calling male sounds like, here you go….it always sounds to me like someone vigorously running a thumb nail over the teeth of a comb.

Now, Corn Crakes are surprisingly particular birds – they need cover both for when they’re calling at the start of the season, and for their little ones when they breed. The vegetation needs to be about 20 cms tall, and to have an ‘open’ structure (so no brambles or, heaven forbid, Japanese Knotweed). Trouble is, when the birds fly in from Africa there aren’t enough plants that are sufficiently tall so early in the season, so the RSPB, with help from volunteers and farmers from all over Norther Ireland, are helping out.

It turns out that stinging nettles are the ideal plants to provide what the Corn Crakes need, and so they are dug up at various sites across Northern Ireland, pressure-washed to remove soil, seeds and invertebrates that might cause trouble on the island, and then transported to where they’re needed. The nettles are then planted around the margins of the fields that the birds favour, so that they have somewhere to hide until the grass in the meadow grows. In 2024, the RSPB created 250 square metres of cover, from about 14 tonnes of nettle root gathered by volunteers.

By Richard Crossley – The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29446896

Clearly the approach seems to be working – the first male Corn Crake was heard on Rathlin Island on 17th April this year. There’s a nice BBC article about the whole endeavour here.

The RSPB have also worked hard to eradicate ferrets and rats from the island, which hosts not only Corn Crakes but Puffins, Fulmar, Kittiwakes and Guillemots, plus many species of ground-nesting birds. No ferrets have been recorded on the island for a year, so fingers crossed that they’re gone.I’m as fond of ferrets and rats as anyone, but humans, as usual, have upset the balance of the ecosystem by bringing in animals to a habitat where they have no natural predators, and the birds in particular are completely defenceless against them. Let’s hope that some kind of equilibrium can be restored.

Plants for the East Finchley Festival

Dear Readers, it’s all getting a bit frantic here at Schloss Bug Woman – I have my Open University exam on 5th June, so there’s a whole lot of revision going on. But on 22nd June it’s the East Finchley Festival, and Friends of Coldfall Wood have taken a stall. My contribution is to create some wildflower pots/containers for the raffle, so here are the plants, waiting for me to clear out a few pots and plant them up. It’s a lovely selection this year – we have betony and harebells, agrimony and knapweed, a couple of primroses and some meadow cranesbill. I bought them from Naturescape, highly recommended for UK native plants.

For a mix of native and garden plants which are grown without pesticides (unlike many of those that you can buy at garden centres), I recommend Rosybee – I’ve just bought some betony and some annual echium for my pots in the front garden.

But what’s this drama that I’m going on about? Well, I had a break this afternoon, and was idly watching the hoverflies. One settled on the nice new fence, so I decided to take a photo because I rather liked the shadow.

Oh dear. Spiders are so, so fast….

….but hoverflies are faster. Not today!

So many dramas! If you sit in a garden with a cup of tea for ten minutes, you’re sure to see something interesting going on. And it’s a good reminder for why I’m doing a science degree – it adds a whole new dimension to what I see every day. Bring on that revision!

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) photographed in Venice…

Dear Readers, I was sitting in my garden, gazing at the sky absent-mindedly when I saw a white bird flying overhead.

‘Little egret’, I said to my husband. And I got to thinking about how amazing that would have been when I was growing up, and how commonly these birds are seen now –  the species was considered to be a national rarity when 3 popped up at Staines Reservoir in 1985. They didn’t breed until 1996. These days, you can see them all over the south of England and Ireland – about a thousand pairs breed each year, usually alongside grey herons, and there are an estimated 12,000 in the UK during the winter.

How can you identify a Little Egret? They are white with a black bill and the most attractive yellow feet, which have a decidedly ‘jazz hands’ feel about them. And what a fantastic photo the one below is, from Peter Hassett at Milton Keynes Natural History Society

Photograph by Peter Hassett, taken at Harrold Odell Country Park, 2019

Last year, there was a lot of excitement over at Walthamstow Wetlands when a Great White Egret arrived. This is a larger bird (about the size of a grey heron) with a yellow beak and no jazz hands! It is currently a much rarer visitor, but just as climate change seems to have encouraged the Little Egret northwards, so might it make life easier here for its larger cousin. Currently about 10 pairs breed in the UK every year, with a larger number visiting in the winter (72 in 2019).

Great White Egret (Ardea alba) (right) and Little Egret (left) Photo by P.L. Tandon at https://www.flickr.com/photos/13070711@N03/47060352071

And finally, here’s the bird that’s currently the rarest of all, though for how long only time will tell. The Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) will be familiar to anyone who has spent time watching the herds of zebra or buffalo in southern Africa. Cattle Egrets first bred in the UK in 2008, but breeding wasn’t confirmed again until 2017. Since then, there have been about 20 known breeding pairs, but the birds can pop up anywhere in the UK during the winter. With their orange bills and copper-coloured ‘Mohicans’, and their habit of hanging out with cattle rather than lurking in the water, these birds should be fairly easy to identify, at least if you have a clear view. Outside the breeding season, the copper ‘flush’ is less noticeable, but note the short neck and thick bill with a black tip.

Cattle Egret in breeding plumage (Photo by By su neko – Cattle Egret, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3797259)

So, although we are losing birds (as evidenced by my Red List series), it’s sometimes good to remind ourselves that other birds are finding our conditions to their liking. Newish wetland reserves, like those at Woodberry and Walthamstow, are attracting an interesting range of water birds. It will be interesting to see who turns up in the future – there are currently occasional Glossy Ibis, an established population of Spoonbill in North Norfolk, and, very rarely, Purple Heron. It’s well worth popping  out to a lake or reservoir, preferably with binoculars in hand, to see what’s about. You might be surprised! And if you’ve noticed anything unusual, do share!

Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea) Photo by By Shantanu Kuveskar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94996249

False Acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia)

Dear Readers, I noticed several of these trees today at the entrance to Walthamstow Wetlands, and I was struck by their creamy floral perfume, and the decidedly bean-like appearance of the flowers. Otherwise known as the Black Locust, the False Acacia is indeed a member of the Fabaceae or bean family. It is a plant native to coastal regions of the north-eastern USA, but has been part of the UK’s flora since the 17th century – the first mention of the plant is in a catalogue from Tradescant’s garden from 1634. Although the tree has become something of a pest in southern Europe and parts of North America, in the UK it seems to cause no obvious problems (at least according to Stace and Crawley’s ‘Alien Plants’). I do note that the RHS categorise the tree as a ‘thug’, however, which probably means that it should be planted and watched with care.

False Acacia flowers (Photo By H. Zell – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11016434)

The flowers are beloved by bees – in France the honey that’s produced is highly prized and sold as ‘miel d’acacia‘. Interestingly, the flowering season for a particular tree is only about ten days, which makes me even happier that I caught the Walthamstow Wetland trees in their full glory. In some parts of Europe, a kind of floral ‘jam’ is made from the flowers, but as the leaves and bark of the tree are toxic, this needs to be made with considerable care. The flowers are also sometimes deep-fried as beignets or as tempura, and even the seedpods are sometimes eaten.

Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ (Photo By © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16920751

False Acacia is often planted as a street tree, in particular the ‘Frisia’ cultivar seen above, which has lovely yellow foliage. However, in ‘London’s Street Trees’, Paul Wood describes how the tree often ‘drops’ branches, sometimes with no warning, which makes it rather less than popular than it would otherwise be.

The tree is a pioneer species, quickly growing on disturbed soil, which has made it a popular choice for planting  to reduce soil erosion – its vigorous root system helps to stabilise the soil, and, being a ‘bean’, it has nitrogen-fixing nodules that help to improve the soil.

False Acacia timber (Photo By Androstachys – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12077121)

In its native North America, False Acacia has a long history of being used for ship-building – it was used to make the ‘trunnels’ (a new word, hooray!) which is what the wooden pegs that hold the ship together are called. It was also used in marquetry, garden furniture, flooring and panelling. It is extremely rot-resistant, and can last for over 100 years in soil.

The living tree can last for a long time, too: the oldest tree in Paris is a False Acacia, planted in 1601 by its namesake Jean Robiner from a seed that he found in the Appalachian mountains. It can be found in the Square René Viviani. Propped up as it is, it still looks like a happy and healthy tree, in spite of having its upper branches blown off by a shell during World War I.

False Acacia in the Square Rene Viviani in Paris (Photo By Tangopaso – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10384009)

And here’s a poem by Kathleen Raine, describing the urban and natural environments and how they interconnect in a way that I find irresistible. See what you think.

Dear Readers, there are many things that can  be discombobulating, but jet lag is right up there in the list of possible causes. What day/time is it again? What am I supposed to be doing?

Well, right up there with the list of things that I should be doing is revising for my Open University exam – it’s on Wednesday 4th June, so not very far into the future. But when I open my notes they might as well be in Sanskrit – my mind seems rather thinner than it should be, and all I can do is yawn. Never mind. I take myself outside for a walk around the garden, and notice the seedheads on the clematis. I’ve always loved them – my Mum used to call them ‘little hairdos’ but I’d never noticed that, actually, they go through a variety of stages. In the photo above, the one on the left is decidedly poodle-esque, while the one on the right has a more Afghan hound-ish look. Apparently, the  ‘tails’ of the seeds become fluffier as the seeds ripen, to allow the seed to travel further when it’s released, so the Afghan Hound is younger than  the Poodle. Also, one should also cut the seed heads off to encourage flowering. A bit too late, in  this case!

If the seeds have not been fertilised, there will be no little seedpod attached to the tail, so I will have to have a closer look. It’s very tempting to plant a few seeds, but they are unlikely to come ‘true’ (this clematis is one of the spring-flowering ones, not the ubiquitous ‘Freckles’  but something similar), and also they can take up to three years to germinate.

As I wander around, I note that the pond level has gone down by a good six inches in sunny weather, and keep my fingers crossed that one of the forecast thunderstorms dumps its water in East Finchley. Everything is a bit dry and breathless and on the verge of wilting. Including me! Time for a cup of tea, I think, and a bit of acceptance that the brain is not firing on all cylinders today, and I might just as well go and do something useful that doesn’t involve learning the insulin signalling pathway. Sometimes, giving up is not the worst thing in the world.

Incidentally, ‘discombobulate’ comes originally from the early 19th century in the USA – it’s a humorous word apparently based on ‘discomfit’ or ‘discompose’. And there is no antonym, i.e. ‘combobulate’. So now we know.

The sun shone brightly for our last morning in Toronto, as it so often does – it’s as if the place wants to make us even more reluctant to leave than we already are. And I must admit that my heart increasingly belongs to London and Toronto in equal measure. While London bears the weight of history, Toronto has the brashness of a relatively new place, which changes every time we visit, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Take the CN Tower, for example. Finished in 1976, it was at 1815 feet the tallest free-standing tower in the world until 2007 when the Burj Khalifa took the record. It soldiered on as the world’s tallest tower until 2009 when the Canton Tower overtook it. Today, it’s the tenth tallest tower in the world, and the tallest free-standing structure on land in the Western Hemisphere. Which might seem something of a comedown, but this is an iconic landmark that seems to pop up wherever you are in Toronto, in much the same way as the Post Office Tower seems to peer from the most surprising alleyways in London.

Our last morning in Toronto is always a bit tricky to navigate, but on a glorious morning it was wonderful to walk alongside the Lake, hearing the red-winged blackbirds calling, and positively tripping over the sparrows. What a delight it is to hear them everywhere, to see them disappearing into the smallest crevices in old buildings and new skyscrapers alike. There were even some chirruping in the atrium below. I think this is the most beautiful internal space in Toronto.

This is the Allen Lambert Galleria in Brookfield Place – it was designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, who seems to specialise in buildings and bridges that seem to defy gravity. Certainly this is a light and airy space with something of the cathedral about it. And inside, there’s a fine piece of ‘facadism’, with the front wall of the bank that used to stand on this street preserved as if pinned in a case of butterflies.

And so we head home, though I always feel melancholy leaving the friends and family here. It’s strange to feel so attached to a place thousands of miles away from where I live, but then I have been coming to Toronto for 25 years, so I suppose it was going to work its way under my skin at some point. This time, we’ve celebrated my mother-in-law’s 97th birthday, and said goodbye to her 95 year-old sister. I’m both glad to be heading home to London, and sad to be leaving.

Pond pre-duckweed removal…. 

Dear Readers, well here we are, back in East Finchley. Gosh, has it been dry! Some of the plant containers were positively dusty, and the duckweed had taken advantage of us not doing a regular skimming and has taken over the whole pond.

What was a delight, though, was to see the whitebeam….

…and the hawthorn coming back to life. it will take them a few seasons to recover properly, but I have made both trees a promise that I’ll give them a much less drastic trim more frequently, so that they never need something so drastic again.

My wildflower seeds are popping up, and I see rather a lot of garlic mustard, which is no bad thing – the orange-tip and brimstone butterflies love it, and it’s even edible. Plus, it springs up and then dies back, so there won’t always be so much of it.

Garlic mustard (Jack-by-the-hedge)

And the Lamium orvala (balm-leaved deadnettle) is doing very well this year, and is taking advantage of the sunnier conditions now that it isn’t so overshadowed. The bumblebees love it!

We seem to have a lot of white Herb Robert…

and, of course, green alkanet, though a little less than last year.

John started to remove some of the duckweed, and spotted this little guy… I love the way that they swim with their legs by their sides, like some kind of sea monster.

And there are some adult frogs left…

…and lots of tadpoles, which get tangled up with the duckweed and have to be gently flicked back into the pond.

So we removed about two thirds of the duckweed, to make sure there was still a bit of shade. No doubt it will be back to complete cover once we turn our backs.

And blimey, it’s very warm, even in our north-facing garden. There are lots of holly blue butterflies, quite a few small red damselflies, and the first fledgling starlings. Ah spring. what a wonderful season.