This year my girl friend and I made the decision to sow wild flowers in the Garden, in replace of some fairly typical Garden plants that I like to call 'fake plants'. By fake I mean, they don't really have any value to the ecosystem, other than sat there looking pretty.
So in came the wild flowers and even though we were getting a few funny looks as the weed looking stems started shooting, we're so glad we did it now! Not only is the Garden looking very colourful, it has brought about lots of insect activity that we simple didn't get before! The Borage plants were getting huge and very weed looking until they flowered and now they are buzzing with life! As you can see below, this is the first ever Oak Bush Cricket I've had in the garden and with it, what I think is a Honey Bee (though I'm not a Bee expert at all)...
I just about timed this right as the Bee flying from the flower made the cricket jump off the plant altogether.
Because of the boost in insect activity, we've also started to get Toads visiting in the night time from the nearby Canal / Stream. Over-all, extremely happy and very low maintenance which is exactly what we needed.
Funny that I should stumble upon this Oak Bush Cricket in the Garden.. as this was 1 of the 10 species we intended on finding at Llandegfedd's Grasshopper event with Steve Williams on the weekend.. We simply couldn't find one lol.. well there we go. #Garden-tick!