Highlights from my wild garden, May 2026

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:01]Welcome back. These last few days of May have been absolutely scorching. I'm just having a little chill.

[00:00:09]Uh on and off through the through the month I've been pottering around my garden and I've videoed a few of the more interesting things that I've spotted. Thought you might be interested to have a look, so here's kind of May highlights for 2026 from my wildlife garden.

[00:00:28]Enjoy.

[00:00:32]Let's have a little hunt around near the house first.

[00:00:36]The tidiest bit of garden.

[00:00:43]These beds have yet to really come into flower.

[00:00:51]Most of this stuff will be popping out in July.

[00:00:54]It all looks pretty cool.

[00:01:02]It's very noisy.

[00:01:05]House sparrows.

[00:01:08]We've got uh I think seven house sparrow nests in boxes dotted around the walls of the house.

[00:01:15]There's one hidden in that wisteria.

[00:01:25]Geranium Rozanne.

[00:01:30]It's a hardy perennial, really easy to grow.

[00:01:35]So it forms these spreading clumps and you get gorgeous flowers.

[00:01:40]They're not beautiful. They're not.

[00:01:43]Early bumblebee down there.

[00:01:52]Really loved by bumblebees.

[00:01:57]If you cut it down after flowering, it often has a second showing, second flowering.

[00:02:04]Worth doing.

[00:02:25]This in the foreground, it's quite an unusual plant. It's Tragopogon, I think.

[00:02:33]Goat's beard.

[00:02:35]It's just It's You might be struggling to see what I'm looking at, but it's this plant with the spiky leaves, or very pointy leaves, anyway.

[00:02:46]And uh it's a member of the daisy family, the Asteraceae.

[00:02:53]Um has these interesting purple flowers.

[00:02:58]Let me just see if that's actually in focus.

[00:03:04]Hopefully you can see it.

[00:03:06]I grew it from seed a couple of years ago, and it it self-seeds.

[00:03:10]I think it's an annual.

[00:03:13]Uh I haven't actually seen any insects visit the flower yet, but it's early days.

[00:03:18]But what What a handsome plant.

[00:03:21]Rather lovely. Got lots of new new buds coming on.

[00:03:26]I'll let you know how it performs.

[00:03:33]So, there you have some bird's-foot trefoil.

[00:03:36]Not a beautiful plant, pea family, obviously, as is the clover.

[00:03:41]And uh um has these lovely yellow and orangey flowers. Bacon and eggs is an old English name.

[00:03:52]Anyway, good for bumblebees.

[00:03:55]Good food plant for various butterflies.

[00:04:00]What could you wish for? And it's a great for a rockery, great for naturalizing in a lawn.

[00:04:06]Well, here I've got it creeping out over the edge of a gravel drive.

[00:04:11]Campanula, bellflower.

[00:04:15]There's dozens of different species and cultivars.

[00:04:20]But almost all of them are good for for bees.

[00:04:25]Couple of honeybees on here at the moment.

[00:04:29]This particular variety scrambles around low to the ground, but you can get some campanulas that grow a meter or two tall.

[00:04:45]Lovely flower.

[00:04:53]Catmint, got to be one of the best plants for bees.

[00:04:58]Just come into flower.

[00:05:01]With quite a lot of common carders buzzing around.

[00:05:05]Just such a lovely color, isn't it? It's a little delicate mauve.

[00:05:15]Flowers for ages, it just keeps going and going. But it looks at its best in mid-spring.

[00:05:23]Gorgeous.

[00:05:27]Chives.

[00:05:29]Popular herb, quite versatile in the kitchen.

[00:05:33]And it has these beautiful flowers. It's a member of the onion family, of course.

[00:05:40]I'm just growing it as an ornamental.

[00:05:43]Fairly popular with bees, but uh not overwhelmingly so.

[00:05:51]Really easy to grow. This This is just in a pot on the patio.

[00:05:54]So, it's something even if you've got a tiny amount of space like a roof terrace or window box, you can grow some chives.

[00:06:29]Wild garlic.

[00:06:32]Very few insects into visit the flowers, but they're beautiful and the leaves are really good for cooking.

[00:06:38]Make a fab garlicky pesto.

[00:06:45]This This is a single variety of peony.

[00:06:52]Quite unusual.

[00:06:54]A bee-friendly peony.

[00:06:57]Got a steady flow of bees visiting it.

[00:07:06]It's one Can't tell what it is. Little solitary bee of some sort.

[00:07:12]They're right there.

[00:07:15]Really spectacular flower.

[00:07:19]It's very beautiful. Doesn't last long.

[00:07:23]But, while it lasts, fabulous.

[00:07:29]I might try and spread this around the garden a little.

[00:07:33]Next to it, we've got a allium, of course. Another allium.

[00:07:40]One of the many different cultivars that are available.

[00:07:43]All of us are all popular with these as far as I'm aware.

[00:07:48]There must be some sugary secretion being produced by these peony flower buds as they come and ants all day long.

[00:08:00]I've never noticed that before.

[00:08:07]It's common blue damselfly whizzing around.

[00:08:13]Yellow flag.

[00:08:15]It's a favorite with bumblebees.

[00:08:21]Pond itself is rather need of a clear out, but good for wildlife.

[00:08:30]It's a really hot day today.

[00:08:33]My pond is inundated with honeybees.

[00:08:39]Honeybees are one of the few bees that drink water, collect water.

[00:08:44]They do it on hot days to take it back to the hive and evaporate it to cool the hive.

[00:08:51]Fan their wings as well to drive the create a kind of air conditioning system.

[00:08:58]Helps the hive prevents the hive from overheating essentially.

[00:09:04]You know that you can see them all whizzing about.

[00:09:06]It's one, two drinking down there.

[00:09:13]Let me zoom in on them.

[00:09:20]Where are they?

[00:09:28]And you get the idea there's loads of them buzzing about.

[00:09:51]>> This is Valerian.

[00:09:54]Kentranthus.

[00:09:57]Really thrives in very well drained places. You can see sometimes growing out of the top of a wall, that kind of place. Good in rockeries.

[00:10:09]And uh not super popular with bees, but it's it's the best thing in the garden for attracting uh hummingbird hawk moths, which are migrants that come up during most springs in Britain.

[00:10:23]Coming up from the the Mediterranean.

[00:10:27]Beautiful insects. And at night you see quite a lot of moths visiting uh Valerian if you come out with a torch.

[00:10:36]Very pretty plant.

[00:11:01]Don't know if you can see it, but little of the screen, there is a painted lady butterfly.

[00:11:08]Flown all the way from south of the Sahara this spring to breed in here and then go back again in the autumn. Amazing.

[00:11:19]Well, there we go.

[00:11:22]Amazing that such a fragile little creature can cover such vast distances. Where's it gone? Sorry.

[00:11:35]Can I get in a bit closer for you?

[00:11:46]Poppies are glorious native wildflower.

[00:11:51]Annual plants, so you need to save the seeds every year, some will come up on their own.

[00:11:59]A black pollen which bumblebees like to collect.

[00:12:03]It's quite uh unusual when you see a bee with black pollen balls on its legs.

[00:12:15]Comfrey is alive with insects.

[00:12:19]It's quite interesting. There's a lot of nectar robbing going on, both it's called primary robbing and secondary robbing.

[00:12:26]So, the conventional pollinator is a long-tongued bumblebee like a garden bumblebee or a common carder bumblebee bumblebee.

[00:12:39]But, um short-tongued bumblebees bite holes in the top of the flowers and steal the nectar, and then honeybees whose jaws are too weak to bite the holes use holes bitten by short-tongued bumblebees to uh their own short-tongued short-tongued bumblebees like the early bumblebee also do this secondary robbing.

[00:13:05]Oh, that one was just doing it.

[00:13:08]Sorry, uh to recap, where was I?

[00:13:11]The honeybees are secondary robbers as are some of the short-tongued bumblebees.

[00:13:17]Which means they use holes bitten by other species to suck out the nectar.

[00:13:24]Let's see if I can show you a honeybee doing that. There's one.

[00:13:31]If I can get it in shot or else they'll fly off.

[00:13:36]Bear with me.

[00:13:42]Okay, there.

[00:13:44]Right in the middle.

[00:13:46]Don't know if you caught that. There's another one here.

[00:13:50]I think there's lots of them.

[00:13:54]There's a pair of shield bugs mating.

[00:14:00]Sorry to film you in the act.

[00:14:04]Disgraceful.

[00:14:07]They remain locked together for hours even days.

[00:14:11]Quite impressive, really.

[00:14:23]This shrub is a a dahlia.

[00:14:27]It's got a good name for it cuz it's popular with bees.

[00:14:42]Mix of honeybees today Come and have a look over here.

[00:14:59]This is a a water butt, the old cold water tank from the loft in the house.

[00:15:04]Which I may use to catch rainwater from the greenhouse roof.

[00:15:10]And I uh fill the rainwater butt with uh comfrey leaves.

[00:15:17]And as they rot, they make a fantastic liquid manure, liquid fertilizer.

[00:15:22]Really makes my tummies grow beautifully.

[00:15:26]But, look who we've got on the surface here.

[00:15:32]There's several rather handsome rat-tailed maggots.

[00:15:39]See how easily you can see them. I'll try and zoom in a bit. There with me.

[00:15:46]So, these little beasties are the larvae of drone flies, I think, from the look of them.

[00:15:58]Uh the drone fly is a kind of hoverfly that lays its eggs around the edges of little puddles full of rotting leaves.

[00:16:08]So, they love this water tank.

[00:16:12]The tube that's tail is actually a snorkel.

[00:16:17]Allows them to breathe if they go deeper down.

[00:16:22]Aren't they good old regular bathers, aren't they?

[00:16:26]They feed on the bacteria from the rotting vegetation.

[00:16:30]Gorgeous creatures. What's not to love?

[00:16:34]Look at the tail on that one.

[00:16:40]Let's have a little look what's up here.

[00:16:44]One of the many wild corners of the garden.

[00:16:51]It's growing really lush this year.

[00:16:55]We had a little bit of rain recently.

[00:16:56]Now, having gorgeous warm weather.

[00:17:00]Ox-eye daisies have all just come out.

[00:17:03]They're very pretty with the buttercups.

[00:17:16]This rhododendron up here is looking spectacular this year.

[00:17:22]Look at that. What a show.

[00:17:25]And I can see some bees in it.

[00:17:30]Wow.

[00:17:38]There's more bees on the comfrey.

[00:17:41]It's right in front of me.

[00:17:47]Bracken's taking over a bit in here.

[00:17:50]But the cow parsley already going over for the year.

[00:17:57]But it's such a gorgeous fluffy frothy flower for the week or two that it lasts.

[00:18:08]Nettle's getting a bit out of hand in here, too, but food plants for lots of insects, so that's all right.

[00:18:19]Okay.

[00:18:23]One could get a bit lost in here these days.

[00:18:27]These are rather nice. These are sorrel flowers.

[00:18:34]Can eat the leaves of sorrel.

[00:18:36]Sort of miniature version of dock, but uh more attractive and less sluggish.

[00:18:51]It's a little peak of my yellow rattle patch, which is now coming into flower.

[00:19:13]You can see how the grasses are not very vigorous.

[00:19:20]Elsewhere in the garden, the cock's-foot is now this time of year is a meter tall, but here grasses are all rather stunted from the parasitic action of the yellow rattle.

[00:19:36]Yes.

[00:19:37]Just have a little closer look so.

[00:19:45]Lovely flower.

[00:20:01]Over here we've got a my common spotted orchid complete with metal metal cage to stop the dog from or flattening it as she runs around.

[00:20:23]Isn't that beautiful?

[00:20:36]Through here we've got the veggie patch in a sunny corner.

[00:20:45]More comfrey. Veggie patch is kind of surrounded by comfrey.

[00:20:51]Which of course once again is covered in bees.

[00:20:58]The rhubarb's had an amazing year.

[00:21:04]Growing like treffids.

[00:21:08]More than enough to feed the whole village.

[00:21:14]And we've got got parsnips here.

[00:21:18]Three-cornered garlic.

[00:21:20]Onions, good onion crop coming on.

[00:21:27]This is It's got a vegetable, obviously.

[00:21:31]Green alkanet.

[00:21:33]Very popular with bees. Many honey bees at the moment.

[00:21:44]There's a honey bee.

[00:21:46]And I always call it green alkanet. I think it used to be used as a green dye.

[00:21:51]Flowers are anything but green, as you can see.

[00:22:02]It's a borage family plant.

[00:22:05]Same family as comfrey, borage, obviously.

[00:22:09]And forget-me-nots.

[00:22:12]We'll have a look at the forget-me-nots.

[00:22:19]I use it as a kind of green manure to keep the other keep less desirable plants at bay, shall we say?

[00:22:27]Never a good idea to leave ground bare.

[00:22:29]And forget-me-nots are really easy to pull up when you want to get rid of them.

[00:22:33]And they're gorgeous when you don't.

[00:22:40]Aren't they beautiful?

[00:22:54]In a corner of the veggie patch, I have got a kind of overgrown weedy patch.

[00:23:03]which uh helps to bring in the pollinators, I like to think.

[00:23:08]Foxgloves and mullein.

[00:23:12]The mullein has got some rather rather cool mullein moth caterpillars.

[00:23:22]So, I can see in the shade.

[00:23:25]Another beauty.

[00:23:27]And the one behind it, too.

[00:23:32]Aquilegia such a gorgeous flower.

[00:23:39]Hides its nectar in the uh the end of little curved tubes.

[00:23:45]So, it's pollinated mainly by That's a garden bumblebee, which is our longest-tongued Oh, are we? Sorry. Can't see it. Try again.

[00:23:55]Whoa, yeah.

[00:23:57]She's just She's putting on a show for us.

[00:24:04]Uh three yellow stripes and a white bottom and a very long tongue.

[00:24:08]It's also a little early bumblebee in there somewhere.

[00:24:12]Anyway, some of the shorter-tongued bees nectar rob by biting holes in the backs of the flowers.

[00:24:18]Not that it really matters. It seems to self-seed happily enough.

[00:24:22]And uh I have lots of it scattered around the garden and in my greenhouse for some reason. I don't know how it got in there.

[00:24:29]But isn't it beautiful? Comes in a range of colors.

[00:24:33]The whites and creams and purples.

[00:24:36]Some pinky ones.

[00:24:39]This is one of my favorites.

[00:24:43]Here in the fruit cage, there's a lot more loganberry and a lot more bees.

[00:24:50]This is going to be a brilliant crop this year.

[00:24:54]There's a It's a tree bumblebee.

[00:24:59]Very distinctive chestnut thorax and a black abdomen with a white bottom.

[00:25:07]It's going crazy. And there's a honey bee as well.

[00:25:15]Look at that. Covered in bees.

[00:25:18]All busy ensuring I get a lovely fruit harvest.

[00:25:23]Happiness.

[00:25:26]This is pretty cool.

[00:25:29]Center screen there.

[00:25:32]It's the bumblebee hoverfly.

[00:25:36]One of the most beautiful British bumble uh hoverflies.

[00:25:41]And uh one of the more impressive bee mimics you might see.

[00:25:46]Quite common.

[00:25:49]But uh still a pleasure to see one.

[00:25:56]See how close we can get.

[00:26:00]So, that's Yes, taking on the impression of a garden bumblebee perhaps.

[00:26:11]Perhaps it's just a white-tailed bumblebee.

[00:26:14]It's slightly kind of halfway between the two, but I guess the idea is that uh to a bird's eye it just looks like a bumblebee, so they don't try and eat it.

[00:26:26]So, they think it's going to sting them, because it isn't.

[00:26:29]If you want to know how to tell a hoverfly from a bumblebee or either kind of bee check out the antennae.

[00:26:39]You're probably thinking you can't see any antennae on this. They're really tiny, and that's the whole point. Bees have quite obvious linear antennae.

[00:26:49]And this only has two wings, whereas a bee would have four wings.

[00:26:54]Although the bee's hind wings are not big and obvious. Anyway, that beautiful insect.

[00:27:02]It even seems to have, look, fake pollen on its hind legs.

[00:27:08]Yes, that's what it looks like to me.

[00:27:11]I've never noticed that before.

[00:27:14]A gorgeous insect.

[00:27:17]The bumblebee hoverfly.

[00:27:27]Some welcome shade under the sycamore here.

[00:27:51]With solar panels, more or less break even electricity these days.

[00:28:00]Having a heat pump installed in the summer.

[00:28:04]So, hopefully we can be as near as dammit carbon neutral, which would be fabulous.

[00:28:12]This is a I don't know where this came from, just popped up.

[00:28:17]Another interesting iris.

[00:28:24]I'll look up what it is, what species it is.

[00:28:35]This odd-looking flower is a allium siculum, another onion family plant, with these sort of pendant They're really rich in nectar.

[00:28:51]Uh Sicilian honey garlic is is its common name.

[00:28:55]I find it is really robust. It keeps spreading and popping up in my garden, and it's gorgeous.

[00:29:03]Quite a weird-looking plant, but uh one of my favorites. Well, I do have a lot of favorites, as you might have noticed.

[00:29:11]Beautiful.

[00:29:17]Got some enormous mole hills appeared in the garden recently. I don't know how big the moles are that made this.

[00:29:24]I haven't actually seen a mole in the flesh in this garden, but uh there are clearly lots of them around.

[00:29:30]I I cannot fathom why some people put traps down to kill them.

[00:29:36]What harm are they doing?

[00:29:38]I'm sure, you know, the mower um doesn't enjoy going over a mole hill, but it's not a big deal.

[00:29:46]Actually, I find this this um it's the soil that they bring up is really useful as a um for compost, particularly for growing seedlings and seeds in cuz it's because it comes from a few inches below the ground, it tends to be free of weed seeds.

[00:30:06]And uh it's rather lovely fine fine stuff. Anyway, what's not to love about a mole and a mole hill?

[00:30:17]Lupins.

[00:30:20]Classic cottage garden flower.

[00:30:24]Spectacular.

[00:30:26]They don't last long. They go to seed before you know it.

[00:30:31]But for a few weeks, magnificent.

[00:30:36]I don't know where the bees are. They're normally quite popular with bumblebees as well, but uh not in the minute.

[00:30:43]But who cares when they look that glorious?

[00:30:51]Hope you enjoyed that. Do forgive the wobbly photography. Um I'm not a professional, as you I'm certainly noticed.

[00:31:00]Um been a good month anyway. Uh I might post a similar video in June if I get around to to making one, so do subscribe if you want a notification. Otherwise, have a fabulous summer. Take care.