Working in the garden on an unexpectedly sunny October weekend, I found myself surrounded by bees and butterflies, and perfectly delightful it was too.  All of the photos in this post were taken this weekend.  Last year my flower planting strategy had failed to produce a sufficiently colourful and insect-supporting display during autumn, so right at the beginning of spring, with a lot on my plate at the time, I used every small gap in my days to plant autumn-flowering species.  The great dollops of colour and the endless flow of butterflies and bees, assisted by a mild October, feel like a very generous reward for lugging around bags of compost and for feeding them my dad’s “magic mix” of three parts bonemeal to one part Q4 mycorrhizal.  Now, when the summer species and particularly the buddleias have gone over, there is plenty to keep the flying insects fully sustained.

The autumn-flowering aster (also known as Michaelmass) daisies and Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) have been the real successes, growing fast and densely, bright domes of colour all over the garden, attracting huge numbers of bees and butterflies.  The multi-coloured dahlias, yellow-petalled rudebeckias, purple-blue tradescantias and tall, elegant pink windflowers (Japanese anemones) are all still doing well.  Ivy flowers, clusters of pale yellow pom-poms, are also popular with butterflies, bees and ladybirds.  This cheerful floral mix is supplemented by lingering lupins, phlox and roses, which have done their fair share too.  The succulent-leaved Hylotelephium, which we used to call ice plants when I was a child, are still in flower, but although they were smothered with butterflies and bees only a couple of weeks ago, they are now being ignored.
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I spotted two bright commas (Polygonia c-album), with their deeply indented lace-edged wings, a few fluttering large whites (Pieris brassicae, also known as cabbage whites), a small white (Pieris rapae) , and a  luminous yellow brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni, which has been quite rare in the garden this year), and a single painted lady, but otherwise the butterfly scene was dominated by an astonishing number of red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) and small tortoisehells (Aglais urticae).  Apart from the red admiral, the above-mentioned are native species.  The red admirals were clustered mainly on the aster daisies, whilst the tortoiseshells were staying mainly on the Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonerensis).

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The red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) is one of a number of butterfly species that breed twice in a year.  They are visitors to the British Isles, arriving in spring and throughout the summer.  They breed here in the summer.  They lay their eggs on young stinging nettles, the leaves of which provide sustenance for the caterpillar before it becomes a chrysalis and emerges, with damp wings that need spreading to dry, into a British summer.  The caterpillar emerges from the egg on the upper side of the leaf, and binds its edges together with silk, consuming it from the inside out, before moving on to a fresh leaf.  The butterfly can emerge at any time from May to October. I lost control of part of the garden earlier this year, under a bramley right at the back, and had a patch of stinging nettles that were taller than me, which is also shared with an unusual type of aster plant with stems that are also taller than me.  I took up the nettles some weeks ago, but this is where the red admirals are clustering right now.  Although I didn’t see any red admirals on fallen apples, these are usually very popular with the species, so it is a good idea to leave some if you have red admirals in your garden.

The tortoiseshell is a native hibernating species that is also known from all over and further afield.  Like the red admiral, the caterpillar is happy on stinging nettles, where the eggs are laid on the underside of leaves.  They breed twice a year, emerging as early as March and again in August.  They can usually be seen until October.  This weekend Verbena bonarensis was the only plant in which they were showing any interest.  It is not everyone’s idea of a good garden plant because a small purple head grows on a very tall stem, but I love it.  It is easy to grow, and spreads itself like crazy, so you never really know where it is going to turn up next, although shaking a seed head in a general area usually works.  Fortunately, they pull out very easily if they turn up where you don’t want them, and don’t mind being replanted elsewhere if you do it immediately and provide lots of water.

The bees, less discriminating than the butterflies, were taking advantage of any flower that showed its face, but were particularly in love with the aster daisies.  I have never got to grips with the different types of bees, but there was an impressive mixture of the streamlined and the furry.  The many hardy fuchsias, the Himalayan honeysuckle and the delicate salvia “hot-lips” are doing a great job providing colour and supporting the bees, but do not provide an accessible platform for the butterflies.  Fuchsias, from south and central America were traditionally pollinated by hummingbirds, and we are a bit short of those around here, but the bees do a great job.  There were a small handful of hover flies but the only wasp I saw was the submarine-sized monster trying to find somewhere to over-winter in my living room.

As I was tidying up the patio plants, I noticed that there was an army of caterpillars eating their way through my nasturtium leaves (just a little annoying, because apart from ruining the aesthetics, I use the leaves in salad).  They turn out to be from the Large White butterfly, and are apparently notorious for targetting nasturtium leaves, as well as cabbages.  A tough time of year for them to be starting new lives.  They spend the winter in chrysalis form, ready to emerge in the spring.  Large whites are native, but their numbers can be supplemented by migrants from Europe.

October always has the feeling of impending doom about it, with the run-up to the clocks going back, the garden flowers dying off, and the arrival of dark mornings, dark evenings and cold, wet, windy winters with damp leaves rotting underfoot.  I was truly not designed for a British winter.  It has therefore been particularly uplifting to see the life still fizzing in the garden so late in the year, like a reprieve, with butterflies and bees adding movement and sound to complement the late season colour.

In this era of global warming, a British summer is a moveable feast and it will be interesting to see how butterfly species adapt either by tolerating new conditions or moving to new areas.  The Butterfly Conservation organization has a number of programmes dedicated to the collection of such data from the general public in the hope of tracking some of these responses to environmental change.  Red admirals, like other migrant species die in the winter.  Traditionally Britain has simply been too cold for them to survive the winter frosts, but that may change, and we may see some news species heading northwards, but let’s hope that we don’t suffer too many losses.

For planting for flying insects, and extending seasons for their use at the beginning and end of the year, see Seabrook’s The Insect Garden (see Sources below for full details).

Sources:

Books and papers

Carter, D. 1982. Butterflies and Moths in Britain and Europe. Pan Books in association with the British Museum

Holden, P. and Abbott, G. 2017 (2nd edition).  RSPB Handbook of Garden Wildlife. Bloomsbury Publishing

Mansell, E. and Newman, L.H. 1968. The Complete British Butterflies in Colour.  Ebury Press and Michael Joseph

Seabrook, M.J. 2020. The Insect Garden. The Best Plants for Bees and Bumblebees, Butterflies, Hoverflies and Other Insects.  Northern Bee Books

Websites

Butterfly Conservation
https://butterfly-conservation.org/

UK Butterflies
https://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/index.php