In May we begin to see the first evidence of breeding butterflies in our gardens: eggs and caterpillars!
Some of the easiest eggs to look for are from Orange-tip butterflies. If you’ve seen the adults in your Wild Space, check plants like Cuckoo-flower, Garlic Mustard (also known as ‘Jack-by-the-hedge), Honesty and Sweet Rocket (also known as Dame’s-Violet) for eggs by looking at the stalk where the flower is or was. Orange-tip eggs are helpfully orange in colour and quite distinctive. If you find them you can watch the green-coloured caterpillars feed on the seed pods of the plants for another couple of months, then they will crawl off to a hard surface like a shrub and make their chrysalis and won’t emerge as adults until next spring. That’s why it’s important to let parts of your Wild Space grow wild, as species like Orange-tip may be resting there.
Nettles aren’t everyone’s favourite plant, but they are the main food for many of our most familiar garden butterflies including Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock. If you can, leave a patch of nettles in a sunny area to grow and look out for caterpillars on the leaves. Small Tortoiseshell caterpillars often live together in large webs with dozens of caterpillars inside, whereas Peacock caterpillars are usually single and are distinctive because of their black bodies covered in spikes.
May can be a time to revamp parts of your Wild Space as there are lots more plants available in garden centres and nurseries. I’m running out of room in my current Wild Space, but if I could, I would squeeze in a hardy fuchsia. Fuchsia flowers are fantastic sources of pollen and nectar for bees and have the added benefit of being one of the food plants of Elephant Hawk-moths, one of the most spectacular species of insect. The caterpillars become very large and are hard to miss, with their big ‘eyespots’ that trick birds into thinking they are snakes. You can find more ideas on which plants to add to your Wild Space here: Butterfly-friendly plants for borders – Wild Spaces (wild-spaces.co.uk)
I was delighted to find a Streamer Moth in my Wild Space recently. Caterpillars of this beautiful moth eat wild roses and I only have a single one at the moment. So, I am going to plant another ‘Dog Rose’, Rosa canina, one of our native rose species. I will put it beside the hedge so it grows up through the shrubs, and hopefully will support even more Streamers in future. If you have a hedge, now is a great time to add climbers like Dog Roses and Honeysuckle to attract even more wildlife.
Finally, after a very cold spring, my mini-meadow is now showing signs of new life and the fresh green shoots of Red Clover, Bird’s-foot Trefoil and Lady’s Bedstraw are all appearing. I’m going to help those plants get more light by finally cutting away any dead plant material from last year and placing it below the hedge nearby in case any caterpillars or chrysalises are in it.
