None 😢 Not even the two flowers on the straggly buddleia I found in a pot. They don't seem to stop here, just pass through. Maybe I should hang up bananas?
@Slow-worm Oh, dear. You're not the only one alarmingly, a lot of people are hardly getting any this year! I've been gardening for butterflies and other pollinators for 6 years and this has been the absolute worst for butterflies! Couple of dozen butterflies in the garden at the same time maximum this Summer whereas in the previous two years I was often reaching 100. Very worrying...
No butterflies or bees on my buddleja... the only butterfly regularly around at the moment is the speckled wood, which flutters round the bramble and ragwort flowers. Local ragwort has cinnabar moth caterpillars, but not in the numbers I've seen in previous years.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
Oh wow @_Nicolas_ that is a big difference. I get excited having around 5 at the same time but I'm a fairly new gardener in a new build that came with a square of plain grass, so things have improved massively on the butterfly front for me.
@Crazybeelady That's a lovely time in a home, when you have a blank canvas and start adding stuff and then see insects feeding from all the flowers, so incredibly exciting! I remember when a couple of my buddleias first matured and I planted a small drift of Verbena bonariensis, got about a dozen butterflies in the garden at the same time and it brought the biggest smile to my face!
Ah, that’s why I have this year so many butterflies. It’s impossible to count them but just today, 5 white one were “dancing” around each other in the air and on the lavender, verbena and echinacea at least another 10. Lots of small brown, and common brown ones.
As unhappy as I am with my plant choice this year, but I have never seen such a variety of insects, bees and butterflies. I have had lots of annual Linaria, the Canon went, echinacea, Echinops, Gaura, Cerinthe and cabbage just for the slugs and snails, which strange enough was loved by bees and butterflies.
I also have at least 50 white-tail bees in and on the lavender.
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Not even the two flowers on the straggly buddleia I found in a pot. They don't seem to stop here, just pass through. Maybe I should hang up bananas?
I ♥ my garden.