The Latest Buzz

Britain’s butterflies are in decline.  The boffins at the charity Butterfly Conservation have blamed this not only on the long, cold summers lately, but also on the continued deterioration of suitable butterfly habitat across the rural landscape.  The spread of agricultural pesticides and herbicides is bad enough, but apparently a host of otherwise presumably sensible people are ripping up perfectly good lawns and putting out ‘decking’, quite as if they are some Yankee inbred named Laribee J. Farragut IV who thinks he is on a catamaran anchored off Grand Bahama whether he is or isn’t.  British butterflies are being sacrificed so people can cook up a 'barbie' (not the doll, I hasten to add) during these non-existent Indian summers. 

(The Other One rather rudely informs me that I must change this to ‘First Nations summers’ or ‘First Peoples summers’, or perhaps ‘Canadian Native summers’. I will reply only that I was cavorting with shamen and shawomen on tribal land before she could say ‘ga ga goo goo’ properly, let alone ‘Tontasathna'neta’.)

Bees are also in decline – globally, but more so in Europe and North America.  Without their sticky-footed pollinatory prancing, a third of the crops we eat would need to come up with another method of getting jiggy with it.  Like the butterflies, wild bees are threatened by various environmental factors, including the lack of habitat (natural or otherwise) and increased exposure to rather unsavoury man-made chemicals.

In fact, you can almost add any native British wildlife to the words 'in decline' and there will be a number of Google results to support this – the first few being legitimate research studies.  The main cause seems to be loss of habitat and the use of pesticides.

A long, drawn out debate, I'm sure.  I'm not here to debate what's wrong.  I'm here to figure what to do about it and do it.

To top it all off, I'm fresh out of garden retreat, now that The Other One has taken to doing Tai Chi (or whatever the bloody hell) in the garden, even if she has to wear several fleecy base layers in which to do it without freezing to death in the gutsy, you heard me, gutsy winds we've been having lately.

Truly gutsy

I want to help Britain's native wildlife the best I can.  We're already pretty self-sustained, even down to the gin-making (see The Blog of Grog), but we don't have much of the right sort of vegetation to encourage bees and butterflies.  The newly Tai Chi’d garden is a fairly formal one – perfect for tea parties, but probably not great for the humble bee.  It's also wonderfully manicured, which isn't going to encourage the butterflies.  And the garden borders have already been planted up for the spring with the perennials, the annuals and the hardy spring flowers.

Furthermore, after spending so much time up on the battlements, I do rather miss them now that they don't need any attention.  How about a little retreat at the top?

I am, of course, speaking of creating a wildlife/biodiversity green roof for Airnefitchie.

As a New Year's resolution, I promised to be even more ecologically aware and this will be a big step in the right direction, as we still hum and haw over whether to get a small wind turbine AND solar panels, or just solar panels, or just a wind turbine. And if solar panels, photo-voltaic or hot water or both.

Green roofs are vegetated layers that sit on top of the conventional waterproofed roof surfaces of a building.  They have numerous benefits, such as reducing storm-water runoff (which may not be a particular problem in our rural setting, but it is rather handy in built-up areas susceptible to localised flooding), reducing energy use (always welcome in a castle), increasing biodiversity and wildlife (see above), and my personal favourite, increasing the lifespan of the roof itself, by protecting it from UV light and temperature changes.  Given what I recently spent repairing the battlements, it would be nice to have to not replace them again anytime in my lifetime.

Never again!

The type of green roof I plan to construct is a ‘wildlife roof’. These are designed to replicate a habitat for particular species, or to create a range of habitats to increase the array of species which may inhabit the area.  I would rather like to encourage the bees and butterflies in their decline.  Not to decline.  Oh, you know what I mean.  Maybe a skylark or two whilst I'm at it.

I intend to add a green roof to the cap-hoosie, and a second one to the sloping roof behind the battlements; quite as if the hoosie had just popped up from underneath a garden – but, you know, on top of a castle.

Using the Green Roof Centre's website, run by the University of Sheffield, inspired by Tim's Terrace and David's Extension DIY case studies, and calling Barry, our tame Structural Engineer, as my consultant, I took a trip to the local hardware store and went shopping.

The Landie became laden with lots of funny-sounding items such as polythene root barrier membrane (a double-layered one with a layer of copper sheeting in-between to make sure the roof doesn't grow into the roof), a moisture retention mat, sedum matting, and stainless steel grips to keep the garden on the very steeply pitched roof of the hoosie.  I intend to nick soil from our other garden.

The weather was rather nice yesterday so I got stuck in, with Barry on hand to help and hold the ladder.  Some abseiling equipment was required where the roof was suddenly just parapet with no walkway, but Barry seemed to have no aversion to dangling helplessly off a scruffy castle as he planted grass.

As the sun set, I was watering the newly planted green roof, leaning over the edge of the battlements attached, rope round my waist, watering can in one hand a gin and tonic in the other (PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME).  A rather pleasant experience really, and a lot more fun than ‘calming’ Tai Chi.  I could hardly wait to have my morning tea up here.

This morning was beautiful.  The green roof has survived the night and the flowers we planted were still there.  Nothing, indeed, has slid off the roof and plummeted to the ground below in the style of a holidaying Briton (see Plummeting).

I took up a deck chair and my cup of Earl Grey (lemon, no milk, as God intended) and watched the sun rise a little bit higher.  As I sipped away, watching The Other One get to grips with the Archer or Warrior or something, I heard a very heartening sound.  A very small bee was buzzing about one of the flowers.

I sighed audibly.  Perhaps I should take up beekeeping?

Looks like good, clean fun