June buzzes with activity as garden wildlife thrives. From birds seeking caterpillars for their young to pollinators making the most of the abundance of blooms.
In the collection of Gardeners’ World clips below, Monty is thinking about how to garden with wildlife in mind during early summer months.
More wildlife gardening advice:
Cutting back the spring garden
Monty gives advice on the most important ways to attract wildlife into the garden, including letting some seeds and berries develop. He also explains which seeds need controlling, which wildlife-friendly perennials need cutting back now, and how best to compost them.
Adding Iris to a garden pond
Monty has been leaving the pond pretty much to its own devices to encourage more wildlife and he has noticed masses of frogs and newts, more bats, dragonflies, and even a grass snake. In this clip, he adds Japanese water iris, Iris ensata ‘Pink Frost’, to the border and Iris ensata ‘Kumo-no-obi’ to the shallows of the pond.
Planting Hylotelephium for late-summer pollinators
If you are looking for nectar-rich, drought-tolerant plants to attract late-summer and autumn pollinators to your garden, there aren’t many better choices than Hylotelephium, previously known as sedum. In this clip, Monty plants white-flowering Hylotelephium spectabile ‘Stardust’ and H. ‘Matrona’ with its greeny-purple foliage, in containers on the mound. Sedums have suffered in the past in the fertile soil of Longmeadow’s borders, but in terracotta pots filled with poor soil Monty expects them to thrive.
