I sit in my front garden, which is surely a contender for world’s smallest meadow – a tiny square, rich with native grasses, primroses, lungwort, crocuses and the last of the snowdrops. Leaves poke through the soil, telling me that scabious and knapweed will soon bloom, along with betony, meadowsweet and viper’s bugloss. The one red campion, which has been in flower since December, will be joined by others, and the whole space, in all its tiny glory, might buzz with the hum of a thousand insects.
Except it’s already buzzing. After a few days of fine weather, the male hairy-footed flower bees emerged. Some will have come from the nesting habitats I made for their mothers – miniature cob walls of loam, sand and straw in terracotta pots, with pencilled-in holes for egg-laying. Two years ago, I placed these close to their favourite flowers: lungwort. It didn’t take the females long to find them.
Now, the males zip around them with a high-pitched buzz. They are small and ginger, and have a white moustache, although this is hard to see when they’re so busy. They are desperate to mate, and spend all their time chasing other males away. The black females, with their large, hairy hind legs, haven’t emerged yet, but when they do, there will be food, shelter and eager males – everything they need to make more hairy-footed flower bees.
After the washout spring of 2024 and the quiet, insect-depleted summer that followed, every bee is a miracle. I hope the fine weather continues so that bees affected by last year’s rain can start building their numbers back up, and our summers will buzz once more.
In the meantime, there are other bee habitats in my meadow: a bank of sand and some patches of bare soil for mining bees, two bee hotels for mason and leafcutter bees. All served with a feast of flowers. Imagine if every front garden had its own tiny meadow, its own flowers and shelter, its own populations of bees. No habitat is too small – the more of us that create these spaces in our gardens, the more bees, and other pollinators, there will be.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
